morphing into something different within Transition, so as to enable wider inclusion. This is perhaps why Hopkins also refers to Transition as a ‘Trojan horse’ for permaculture, underlining both the relatedness as well as the difference of Transition vis-à-vis permaculture.17 As Hopkins suggests: ‘permaculture is a concept that is very hard to explain to the person in the pub who asks you what it means, if you don’t have a flip-chart and pens and fifteen minutes in which to draw pictures of chickens and ponds and green-houses. [...] Yet somehow the concept of Transition is easier to explain, allowing more time for other conversations’.18 He goes on to observe that the existence of permaculture in a set of material practices and bodies of knowledge that present some kind of barrier to ‘mainstream’ access risks confining it to a long-term vision of survivalism, opposing the initiated few to the many laypeople. This would however require – to protect permacultural oases in a post-peak oil world – for those tending to them to be willing to defend such oases from hordes of others excluded from the movement of permaculture (which would contradict the very ethos of compassion and care that informs permaculture in the first place).19 Including as many people as possible from the start is therefore a way out of this ethical impasse, so as to ensure the sustainability of a permacultural approach to collective dwelling even in a post-peak oil future.20
Hopkins’s work can subsequently appear as a response to such concern, trying to emancipate permaculture from its more institutionalised aspects and the risk of closure and recast it in a manner that allows it to mix in the life of a range of other situations, beyond the specialised ‘Introduction to Permaculture’ weekend, for example. The inception of the moving of Transition, if we try to find our way into it from permaculture, seems to be located precisely at this fork in the road. A fork where it parts from some of the attachments that are characteristic of permaculture proper, and experiments with alternative modes for drawing in more trajectories and possibilities. And this search gives shape to the moving of Transition, which begins developing precisely around the quality of lowering the threshold for engagement. This is why it then makes sense, after acknowledging the ancestral bloodline with permaculture, for Hopkins to go on to outline ‘six principles that [...] define what is distinctive about the Transition concept’.21 It therefore appears equally – if not more – interesting, when seeing-in-relation Transition and permaculture, to focus not merely on what they have in common, but on where they part. This inquiry becomes an occasion to find what is distinctive in the moving of Transition, such as a tension towards inclusivity that appears to differentiate it from permaculture.
By these means, it is possible for the continuity between Transition and permaculture to shine through, alongside the simultaneous differentiation of Transition’s own style of moving. The concern that initiated this distinction – about avoiding that permaculture close in on itself – would, once woven through Transition, mix and creolise with a number of additional trajectories of action so as to confront Transition with a horizon of its own, distinct from that of permaculture.22 In sum, this varying degree of openness to other trajectories opens a fork in the road, a fork where Transition and permaculture can be set in relation to one another in the process of articulating their reciprocal difference. The import of this differentiation can already be grasped by witnessing the distinctive fit that gardening and food growing – practices that are equally central to the life of permaculture – find within Transition initiatives. It is to these that I now turn to.
Gardening in Transition
Gardens are one of the most iconic ‘things’ that can be observed across Transition initiatives; they are everywhere.23 Food growing projects within Transition take the most varied of forms. In my own experience in Totnes, I have come across tree planting, the upkeep of communal gardens and orchards and the development of community-supported agriculture schemes.24 Moving across the spectrum of food growing projects in Transition, they seem poised to exceed the situated scope of individual experiments, or even the purpose of growing food more generally, and appear instead to be simultaneously entangled as orienting devices towards other undertakings that also have a life within Transition. In this sense, Transition as a whole displays an internal relatedness that takes food growing beyond the more bounded logic of the ‘perma-blitz’,25 and makes it a springboard towards further engagements and invitations, beyond the showcasing of permaculture design techniques.
This manifold, entangled existence of food growing projects is noticeable already in one of the first ones initiated in Totnes, namely the planting of edible fruit and nut trees across town. Beyond the physical impact of the trees in terms of integrating food growing in the urban landscape as well as providing ecosystem services such as carbon capture,26 this activity also offered material embodiment to a distinctive story about Totnes, allowing the latter’s branding as the ‘Nut Tree Capital’ of the UK. This way, the planting of trees becomes more than just an isolated project pertaining to growing food. It is also a device to provide visibility to the moving of Transition as a whole, conjuring – in the trees – the emergence of a distinctive culture of Transition. Through the signposting (with trees) of a space – the nut tree capital of the UK – in which certain orientations are being nurtured, it becomes easier to ‘see’ Transition in its making, and tip over into seeking an involvement with something that sits increasingly within reach. This simple story, in other words, facilitates precisely the sort of immediate communication and open invitation that a long discussion on climate change and peak oil, followed by an outline of the principles of permaculture, just wouldn’t do.
Moreover, the growing of food, whether this may be in connection with the tree-planting project or other forms of gardening, brings together a community that forms around a common task.27 Gardening together offers a sense of shared involvement, without that involvement having to be negotiated from first principles, and without having to come to an agreement on the reasons to engage in gardening. Participating in a communal garden can in fact fulfil many different purposes: from an opportunity to assert a political commitment or an interest in learning more about growing food, to offering ways for a young mother to allay the occupation of childcare (as gardening – and other gardeners – keeps the children busy), or for someone else to learn a skill, to be physically active28 or simply to dig up a few potatoes. In fact, it is the garden itself that necessitates maintenance and therefore sets the stage for building lasting relationships between participants, because they come to ‘owe it’ to the garden’s continued life. The communal garden has the capacity to involve people without asking too many questions: gardeners do not ‘enunciate a principle and then act on it’.29
In addition to this, the meaning of an embodied practice of gardening can only be teased out by exploring what ‘next steps’ are apparent from one’s initial engagement with it, so as to understand what sort of orientation that practice ultimately provides. Here, it is possible to distinguish gardening as a specifically ‘Transition’ thing (and different from, say, a permacultural practice), in the sense of directing participants to undertake further steps into a milieu where gardening latches on to a range of other distinctive possibilities that become accessible from there. And those possibilities relate not so much to the further discovery of permaculture and the acquisition of the embodied and informational resources needed to become a permacultural practitioner. Instead, they introduce concerns that may spark further doings in alignment with the evolving possibilities present within the Transition milieu.30 For instance, one may develop a kindred interest in foraging (and perhaps be ushered into the problem of relating to the ecology one has thereby gained awareness of),31 or a willingness to meet more often by organising potlucks apart from the gardening engagement. Or one may go on to become involved in a community-supported agriculture scheme (and, from there, into supporting the local economy more generally), or take on critical attitudes towards consumption as a consequence of the direct experience of producing food (and search for what additional possibilities might be available to facilitate such behaviour, such as a community currency). In other words, gardening within Transition has the potential to involve participants in a number of experiences and realisations that can induce a sense of a ‘lack of fit’ with the attachments that shape their lives outside of the gardening project and, by introducing new disquiets and areas of concern, spark a search for matching social and material arrangements to release the tension.
An example may help contextualise this better in relation to a particular case. On a cool morning, I joined