Plants, Unlike Westerners, Don't Need Their Space

Westerners don't like to be close to each other. Kinglike, each Joe and Jane strives mightily to enclose his or her immaculate body in a zone of space as vast as possible. The richer the person, the bigger the mansion - each man, woman, and child of the family ensconced in a private room with its own internet and cable hook-up. Want some friend time? Use your hands - to type or text. No muss, no fuss, no awkwardness, and no embarassing revelations that require an emotional response. Want to shop? Cross the sterile lawn to the car and travel in hermetically sealed privilege to the vast emporium of desire with the self checkout machine that sends you off with a chipper "Thank you for shopping at Safeway", every time, perfectly polite and comfortable.

Given the craving for space that Westerners have, it's no wonder that the first thing they did when they took over the Portland Chinese Garden was to create space for the plants, which had started out all jumbled together like they are in nature. They used to shelter bugs, birds, and even a toad. Now the plants are separate clumps in a vast desert of dirt and the toad is gone.

Nature knew what she was doing much better than the gardeners at the Chinese Garden. Plants don't need their space. They grow into each other to shelter a lovely and functional community. They buffer the soil from rain and sun and nourish the animals that do their part to sustain life on this planet.

Separating the plants into regimented and isolated specimens destroys this community as surely as the hurricane that rips off your roof. Not only is giving plants space unnatural and ugly, it's also vandalism, arson, and murder. Unlike us, plants haven't convinced themselves that they don't need anyone else.