Who we are

Radical Plant
Folk aims

-   To celebrate, explore, reclaim and remember ancestral and folk plant knowledges and practices

-   To enable everyone to access plants and plant knowledge and their healing benefits

-   To create an ecologically and culturally diverse garden that is welcoming to all, human and non-human, and that celebrates the cultural diversity of our community

Why Radical?

“Radical simply means grasping things at the root.”

 - Angela Davis

Radical adjective

Of or relating to a root or to roots 

The word radical comes from the Latin word radix meaning root. In many ways relating to the plants, caring for the land and each other, practicing reciprocity with all beings can be viewed today as a radical act. It is in many ways radical within the context of our ecologically destructive extractivist culture. However within the context of generations of Earth-tending ancestors it is not very radical at all. It is in fact a returning, a remembering back to our ancestral and indigenous way of being with the plants, the land, and all beings.

Why plant?

“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

We as humans exist in an interconnected relationship with the plant world. They are at the centre of our lives. We believe that the plants, as intelligent beings and ancient storytellers, have the potential to teach us how to live in harmony with the Earth. In many ways they can nurture us and support our wellbeing. There is value in sharing the exciting and interesting ways we can use plants, but there is also simply great value in getting to know our local trees, flowers and ‘weeds’. We hope that by amplifying the voices of the plants and tending to and building human-plant relationships, we can help bring healing to our Earth and our communities.

 

Why folk?

“Folk is the stuff we make, do and think for ourselves—and the radical potential of these things.”

-   The Folk Is A Feminist Issue manifesta, Lucy Wright

We understand ancestral, folk, traditional land-based knowledge and practices to be an ancestral human right. It is our way of practicing belonging to the land. However oppressive processes have and continue to discredit, invalidate and marginalise indigenous, land-based knowledge and practices.

Our cultural garden project and events offer a space for us to remember, reclaim and re-centre the folk knowledge and traditions held within our communities, and to also collectively imagine alternative ways of relating to the land. To create for ourselves and for the Earth.

We understand that by practicing and sharing land-based ancestral skills and folk knowledge like foraging and making our own herbal medicine, we can help heal our relationship with the natural world.

Acknowledgements

We give deep thanks to the carriers of indigenous land-based wisdom around the world, to the Elders, past and present, for whom we would be lost without their knowledge and resilience.

We give deep thanks to the plants for continuing to teach and heal us.