Plants Grow Here Podcast with Fytogreen's in-house Botanist, Erik van Zuilekom

A word from Erik:

"The core of my design philosophy lies in syntropy, designing planted systems focussing on the inherent capacities of plants to grow, expand, proliferate, and develop compound interest in the form of dynamic and generative (& regenerative) ecologies. Syntropy is rarely focussed upon in urban design, with the prevalent challenge being the survival of plants in extremely tricky environments, influenced by human contact attrition. Human activities and constructions mostly require nature to be vacated, then returned in fractured and overly simplified form, often rife with disconnection and a lack of integration.

This interview allowed me to share concepts, frameworks, philosophies, pragmatic design, and species selection considerations backed by practical methodologies, to assist in maximising the integration of the processes underpinning syntropy, into all design and development undertakings. The world does not need static gardens, manicured, high maintenance-dominated?parklands with severely pared-back ecologies or farming that utilises nature-disrupting mechanisation processes and products. Rather, to ensure humans are designed into cities and allied habitats as a coherent part of the ancient living ecologies that gave rise to us, contemporarily represented by homes, work-spaces, commercial and industrial facilities and farmland, we need to see ourselves as part of such ecologies, not apart from them.

Consequently, biophilic design generates living and working environments that are holistic and healthy for human use, through recognising the central role nature plays in our physical and mental well-being. A core part of this is creating habitats that are syntropic, capable of dynamic change, self-repair, exponential specialisation, and hyper-resource efficiency. Healthy outcomes require healthy design processes, hence this podcast touches upon the value of understanding that we do not grow plants, we grow soil, by growing soil we imbue life and resiliency into systems, by growing soil we grow healthy and organic food and spaces that the human psyche subconsciously responds favourably to. By growing soils, we grow healthy children, who in turn learn to see past plants as static things and rather acknowledge how they are species embodying ancient and highly sophisticated and efficient processes and systems within their own right, having evolved in ecological communities, and developing forms and functions specifically in response to intense and protracted environmental challenges.?

Akin to plants, humans need to understand our place and function within ecologies, to fathom how we can be holistically integrated into a future that requires extreme proficiency, responsiveness, adaptiveness, and resiliency.? This podcast allows us to delve into many such challenges, to understand that problems inherently embody the solutions, and humans can be agents of change, learning from the fractal-like complexity and deeply evolved, refined efficiencies that plants and their resultant ecologies embody.?

We do this by starting at home and learning how to integrate syntropy into our ornamental and edible gardens, expanding out to farms, urban ecologies, businesses, urban design, living architecture and remnant habitats. This is practical, requiring understanding rather than resources, and an understanding of self-identity and the tremendous enjoyment of gaining control over your own home and life, expanding with syntropy into resilient abundance."

To Listen to the podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ep-196-permaculture-syntropics-erik-van-zuilekom-united/id1535360265?i=1000649455509

Follow Erik on Instagram – United Natures Design or on LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/erikvanzuilekom/

Plants Grow Here website www.PlantsGrowHere.com

Fytogreen Australia - https://fytogreen.com.au