Wild circles

Our grass labyrinth was one project that fell naturally from a new way of seeing the land. In its simplest form, it feels like a shift from ownership to guardianship. These ‘wild circles’ are another.

I’ve stopped thinking about our property solely as something to manage and maintain. I think less about how we might use the land and more about what would be useful for the land.

When perspective shifts, priorities reshuffle. Actions that made sense before no longer hold up. What once seemed acceptable (spraying to keep the weeds at bay) now feels horrifying. Things that made sense from a gardening perspective (for example, keeping all the hedges trimmed) make less sense than I thought. Now I think about habitats and safe havens for birds and wildlife. If the places they rely on for food and safety keep getting annihilated, why would they keep living there?

Now everything needs reevaluating. We all have an (often invisible) list of considerations which we measure things against. When we change perspective we cut up the list and toss all the pieces in the air. You have to pick up each one, examine it and see if it still fits. All the things that still fit (and new ones that have appeared) begin to sort themselves into a new order of importance. 

It’s not always easy, even when the paradigm shift feels like a big one, and a permanent one. There is much to be said for habit. The desire for neatness keeps reinserting itself near the top of the list. The idea for a labyrinth sprung out of the desire to both leave some lawn unmowed and maintain a sense of order. 

This is one of the beautiful things about having clarity about what you value—the actions to take grow out of the values. Instead of wondering what step to take next, you can wait and see what ideas naturally present themselves. 

After agreement from all family members on the labyrinth idea (creating a labyrinth meant giving up the space previously used for kicking a ball around), it was an easy leap to ask what else we could stop mowing. We have lots of different spaces around our place, and lots of lawn. 

We decided to create wild circles to grow and flower over summer.

We mowed the lawn leaving five large circles (as well as a few crescent moon shapes, because I was doing the mowing and it seemed like a fun) to grow and flower over summer.

It’s only been three weeks, but I am loving these wild circles already. The kids love to race around and between them—the mown areas feel like a running track—and already some plants are beginning to flower. Just yesterday I found two damselflies. 

I’m so looking forward to this summer. I’m pretty sure sitting and watching the insects is going to be way more fun than clipping hedges and pulling weeds