Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

Professor Roy Ellen, the project director, said: “This project aims to better understand the levels of agrobiodiversity found in home gardens – that is those gardens intimately linked to individual households. For example, we want to know where seed and other plant material comes from, whether it is purchased or obtained informally, who gives and receives it; who receives vegetable produce, and the economic scale of such exchanges. We wish to learn how people learn to become good home gardeners. Whilst biological diversity in itself is important, so are the skills and knowledge that maintain it.”

If you were a reasonably active member of this community and you read the above quotation you might just possibly think, “Ah. Another project to explore the value of agricultural biodiversity and the social networks that support it in some far-flung corner of the developing world. Nepal, maybe, or Burkina Faso.”

But you would be wrong. For the quote comes from an announcement of a project to study home gardens in that most English of settings, Kent. ((I’m giving it more space than Luigi’s original nibble, because I think it is worth it.)) This is exactly the sort of thing I think is sorely needed to forge links among people worldwide. I’ve not been able to find out that much more about the project, although it seems that at least some people at the University of Kent are admirably qualified. And both the Eden Project and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, “will help with the dissemination of the project output”. I hope that means that they will draw the connections to home gardeners everywhere.