Transcription of Ted Carter for the show “Life, Examined”, #84
Dr. Lisa: In 2012 we had the great good fortune to have Ted Carter of Ted Carter inspired Landscapes and author of the book Reunion, How we heal our broken connection to the earth in the studio with us around Earth Day. How fortunate we are again to have Ted Carter coming back because Ted Earth day is your time of year. It’s right around your birthday, it’s right around the time that your book was published. We really appreciate your coming in and giving us an update on what’s going on in the world of dirt.
Ted: Yes. Well, thank you Lisa. It’s great to be back here and it’s great to put a voice behind the work again. I appreciate being here very much.
Dr. Lisa: You really been getting your hands dirty not only have you been working hard with the business that you’ve created and you’ve been working. How many years have you been doing that now?
Ted: How far back do you want to go probably since I was eight years old?
Dr. Lisa: Decades you’ve been working on with that and that’s gotten very successful but now you put new energy behind the book that you’re writing.
Ted: We published our first book Reunion, three years ago but we started our work on it six years ago. Everything in my life seems to go in multiples of three and it’s been out in the public eye now for three years and it’s been picked up by great Northern Books in California.
They happened to think it was a rather prophetic book and it is a book about the times we’re living in. The things that we did predict three years ago have all come true. I hesitate to say that because it’s not all good but it’s something that we basically was a handbook on climate change and what we have to start expecting.
Dr. Lisa: This is you and your co-author.
Ted: Yes, my co-author is Ellen Gunter. She’s a magnificent writer. Essentially we make a very good team because I finance a lot of the publication and all of the work that has to go into it. She does a lot of the writing. It’s a collaborative effort. However, it’s not just her thinking it’s both our thinking together and when we’re rehashing information and republishing things we’re talking continually in editing and trying to figure out how to lay the book out.
Dr. Lisa: Creating a book is a labor of love just as creating this landscape business that you’ve had for all these years. You did it because you do love the earth. You brought in a book today by John O’Donohue that I happen to really love it’s called Beauty. We’ve talked about John O’Donohue on air before and I know that you have a passage that you’d like to read to us.
Ted: I met John a couple of times through Caroline Mace. He was a guest speaker for us with Caroline Mace Institute in Chicago. Unfortunately he died of a brain aneurism a few years ago but an absolutely amazing mystic and wonderful poet and writer, great human being.
Actually chapter two in Beauty in his book entitled Beauty the invisible embrace Beauty, the affection of the earth for us. The beauty of the earth is the first beauty millions of years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the firstborn of creation sculpted with huge patience over millennia. Landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence, and memory.
There is a poignancy in beholding the beauty of landscape. Often it feels as though it has been waiting for centuries for the recognition and witness of the human eye. I just think what we have to realize is that when we create this what I call sacred spaces for people or if we create any space, that space holds our energy.
We pour our heart, our soul, our energy into that creation. That imbues an energy that resonates and comes back to feed us. We think that when we go into that space that when we leave it that space doesn’t miss us but it does and it’s because we complete that piece. The earth feels our presence and those areas fill our presence.
When we walk into a nature preserve we feel like we are the great witnesses. That we witness this but we’re the ones being observed by 1,000 eyes. The birds are looking at us. The insects that are crawling on the side of the tree are peering out at us. The frogs are looking at us. You could have a fox behind another tree looking at us. We don’t see them but we’re the ones being observed.
I gave a lecture at the flower show on Saturday and I said, “We have the option of looking at the world through soft eyes or hard eyes. When we look at the world through hard eyes that’s the preparation. We look at human beings with hard eye and that creates a barrier, a separation or we can look at other human beings through soft eyes and that invites people to come towards you into that invisible embrace.”
Nature is the same way. We can look at her with soft or hard eyes and she can either come to us and we can see her for all her beauty and magnificence or we can look at her as a more of a linear logical local force which is something to be bought, purchased, cut up, divided, manhandled which we do so well.
Ted: When you think of John O’Donohue’s homeland Ireland it used to be a land filled with trees. Well, they cut them all down during the potato famine and other famines and you to Ireland now, there’s no tree. We have, and there’s this huge thing going on with the Amazon Jungle right now. We were on a great path and some of the environmental things have been weakened and now we’re back on the trenches with having them do more deforestation.
It’s always a battle. Learning the indigenous birds in your area that’s a fun thing to do, I have bird feeders. I have always had feeders. I love birds. I’ll be calling birds in and I’ll talk to the chickadee they always sort of talk to you when you’re out there and they go chirp, chirp and they’re all just dancing around.
I’ve had them come down and I’m holding something up and they come and they land right on the object I’m holding, my bird feeder that I’m holding in my hand and they right at me and chirp at me and we have a little conversation and they just fly off and this is how readily available nature is to us and how she talks to us all the time.
When I was in the Red Wood Forest a year ago I remember I was on my crutches and I had had some foot surgery and my crutch would sink down into the forest floor and I’d pull this I’d pull the thing out but my ears would just … whenever I’m near a spirit my ears just go crazy and my ears were just, it was like I was a cathedral in the woods and looking up at these trees and there’s this piercing noise that comes through me and I always that’s the way my spirit communicates. There are spirits, those are the great witnesses. Some of those trees have been around since the time of Christ.
That’s how old they are, 2,000 years old. Anyway I don’t mean to get down that rabbit hole but I get excited when I talk about these things because they’re so they bring so much to human spirit. The other thing is the making of a poly-culture. What happens to the earth when it’s become violated you get all these invasives move in. We all see these honey suckles, Poplar trees, bitter sweet cultch, crap stuff that moves in and that’s like a scab.
When you scrape mother earth when you scrap her skin which is the epidermis which is her skin first shock they’re all connected. It forms a scab. That scab is the invasives because it’s like when you scrape your lawn several times with a plow year after year what grows back is plant and lily or something of that nature.
It’s like a scab and then you get sort of a monoculture going on which weakens the ecosystem. We want poly-cultures where there’s a lot of different floral and fauna out there.
Dr. Lisa: Monoculture would just be one like bitter sweet.
Ted: Right.
Dr. Lisa: The poly-culture would be multiple different things.
Ted: Multiple different things. This is why we’re having such a struggle with genetically modified organisms GMOs because what its doing is it’s eradicating the poly-cultures and creating a monoculture on a vast huge, gigantic level and it’s going from continent to continent. It’s enormous. It’s a huge movement. Europe is really fighting against it. Unfortunately America is a lost cause we’re already too late for America. We are, I’m not being defeat us but Monsanto has done a number.
Dr. Lisa: As individuals in our own backyards, in our own landscapes we can make an effort too.
Ted: We can make an effort to do poly-cultures. I’d move into an area, have these continual discussions with the DEP or with towns that say, “This is a no cut zone. This is a no touch zone.” I say, “What are you protecting here?” It’s a thicket a bitter sweet with honey suckle and Poplar trees. All trash.
Not all honey suckle is trash, all of it is good in proportion and scale but when it comes in a such a quantity and covers vast acres of it of just the same three things, it’s not a healthy ecosystem. I say to them, “What are you trying to protect here? I want to move in here I want to create a poly-culture. I want to move in a different genus and species to create a more balanced ecosystem that supports indigenous wildlife.” They get it but …
Dr. Lisa: Do you think some of it is because people don’t necessarily they’re just aren’t as aware of … You’re going to look at something and say this is a monoculture I can do better than this. Other people are going to look at it and they’re going to say, “Well, we’re trying to save the wildlife. We’re trying to save something.” Maybe their intentions are good that they’re trying to keep things natural but they just don’t have the education and the vision that you have.
Ted: Right and I have to keep that in mind. It’s unfortunate that we pay the dear price of the really reckless person. The reckless backhoe operator that gets on the coast and levels everything. He’ll ruin it for the rest of us because then they have to put these laws into place that are so stringent that you can’t move.
I think there’s a balance there. You’re right. I think that a lot of people get a hold of there’s a lot of people in the landscape design business that don’t understand that balance either. They want to impose their input on the land and I do that too. I see a design sensibility. I come out of a euro centric.
My house is very has a euro centric view to it but it has a relax formality I say but it’s very second English country house. It’s got a prune box, wood hedge, but then it’s got these wild flowers behind it so it’s got the discipline and the undisciplined working together.
You know there’s a lot of freedom through discipline. If we discipline ourselves there’s a lot of movement and creation that happens through that discipline but you have to have a good strong cultural organization to allow for that creativity and that undisciplined piece of yourself to move forward. We’re always moving against those energies.
Dr. Lisa: That’s like creating a garden or creating a landscape. That you have to first have things laid out in order for them to start growing in ways that they would naturally grow.
Ted: Yeah you have to. This is interesting about permiculture which is such a it looks like a mess. I love the idea behind it and everything and I think it’s a great thing but it’s not saleable.
Dr. Lisa: Talk to me about permi culture I’m only vaguely aware of it. I have to tell you my thumbs are not as green as yours.
Ted: Permi culture is about creating a whole system so that you actually live off the land that you have and it completely provides everything that you need from water to fruits, vegetables, flowers. It brings natural forces in and creates a very homogenous habitat for both man and native species and animals and insects and plants.
I’m not doing a very good job describing it but and I’ve attended classes and I’ve gone to workshops because I want to try and understand it better so I can move it into my landscaping work. I’m having a really hard time with it because it doesn’t quite bio dynamics works for me. Working with a biodynamic Rudolf Steiner’s work that has a …
Dr. Lisa: What is it about permi culture that you haven’t been able to quite?
Ted: Its culture. It’s lack of structure. It’s too messy. It’s not saleable. I can’t sell permi culture. I’m not knocking permiculture. I think it’s fantastic for the bright person but it’s my industry in my business model I can’t sell it yet because I haven’t figured out how to market it properly.
Dr. Lisa: Maybe when you’re talking about this balance permiculture might be an ideal but isn’t really quite there yet as far as reality is concerned.
Ted: I think there’s got to be hybrid. I think that we all so much when I think about how we’ve evolved there’s in my book presentation for instance in the slide show that I do for the book Reunion, there’s a picture about how the spray on this mist that’s being cast over all these kids are having lunch in this lunch room and there’s this fog all of it.
There’s this jack that this man is holding that’s spraying all this fog all over them. I say to the people in the audience, “Do you know what that is?” no one knows. I say, “That’s DDT. That’s in the 1950’s. We were promoting DDT.” I remember in Chicago running behind the truck in the fog going up and my gosh, and that was all DDT.
I show one thing when the guy is actually mixing it up in a bowl and eating it. To prove how safe it is, obviously he’s long gone but I mean this is how far we’ve come. When we look at where we are now, we’ve got all these things coming up with the biodynamics it really is there. Permi culture is there. You’ve got people gardening and growing more of their own food.
You’ve got a lot of things happening right now but somehow this needs to be pulled together in a way where it’s an and amd both world. It’s not either, or. I love lawn but I only like someone. I’m not a big lawn person and that doesn’t really interest me but it’s a mono culture and it’s …
Dr. Lisa: We also can’t get rid of DDT on this earth completely because there are parts of the world where Malaria is rampant and DDT is the most effective way to get of mosquitoes so I’m not an advocate of DDT in any way whatsoever but I think it does speak to this balance. We learn things as we go along and if we forget things that we learned previously then we run into difficulty.
Ted: Absolutely. It’s not flushing the baby out with the bathwater it’s about learning as we go and taking pieces we need to take with us and leaving some of that stuff that’s dangerous behind.
Dr. Lisa: One last thing I wanted to ask you about is this biodynamics idea because you referred to it and referred to Rudolf Steiner. What is biodynamics and why do you think it has some important lessons for us as we’re moving forward in trying to heal our earth?
Ted: There’s passage in my book that I’d like to read to you. Bio dynamics is designed to work with healing and empowering the immune system and every molecule of soil and plant life to weight nothing and to have a fully sustainable system.
A biodynamic farmers’ aim is to understand the laws and forces of nature and work in harmony and cooperation with them to cure the soil naturally of the toxins that have been deposited in it and heal our own hungry, disconnected spirits in the process. That is biodynamics in a nutshell. What you work with is perhaps I’ve been to the Josephine Porter Institute spent a week there. I went to the Fifer Institute and took classes there in New York and I have a barn full of cow crap from California that I still have to use.
I have pellets of it that was brought over. It’s probably the most expensive cow manure that I’ve ever a lot of people probably would have never purchased. Anyway it takes a little bit of this. It’s the essence of this. You take and you use as spray. You make these preps and you spray them and they work bio dynamically with the plant life and with the soil.
Dr. Lisa: The reason you were so excited about the California cow poop is because it was biodynamically prepared?
Ted: Right with the cow the culture. The cows are great and bio dynamic land with bio dynamic preps. You have the oak bark prep and the natal prep and all these different preps. You bury them. The earth inhales as we’re moving into the winter you bury your preps in the soil in the winter time as you’re moving into winter because the cosmos, think of the earth on one side of the earth is inhaling, inhalation. Pulling the cosmic forces into the prep and then the Southern hemisphere is exhaling so inhale, exhale. We’re now moving as we’re moving to spring we’re moving into exhalation.
We leave the prep for one solid year and then we harvest them and out of that one space we put new preps in and we use those preps and we use a little of the essence of those preps just a pinch full in a sprayer, a handful of the stuff will do a whole acre.
Dr. Lisa: The prep you mean is the cow manure?
Ted: It could be the bark prep that you take off the trees. It could be the natal prep. Now Fifer, not Fifer but Josephine Porter makes themselves the prep and you buy the preps from them. You can make your own preps and I haven’t been able to do my own preps because I haven’t had time and I bought a lot of stuff from Josephine Porter. I’m still playing with this stuff.
Dr. Lisa: You as you’re working with people who have asked you to do their landscaping you’re keeping all of these things in mind. You’re keeping in mind the health of their own ecosystem within their land and also the health of the greater ecosystem and what they need and want to have out of it. You’re trying to create this. It’s not just planting flowers or planting trees. You are trying to look at some bigger way of bringing life and beauty to their lives.
Ted: My journey with my clients is more of a spiritual journey. Yes I’m a landscaper but it’s much more involved than just planting a few bushes and trees. You have the human spirit is very complex and it’s very multifaceted and our biological systems is complacent and is incredible as our anatomical system is and as complex as it is so are our human spirits.
When I look at the land that’s another whole set of complexities so you’re moving the complexity of all the different land is so different. I come on to a job site, every job is different, every piece of land is different, the clients are different. It’s so hard to get bored in this business because there’s so much diversity and complexity.
You’re trying to meld the spirit of the land and the spirit of the inhabitant and create a space that really embraces them. I want to create a space so that they don’t want to leave. They love their place, that they feel like I’m out in the world, I’m doing my work but when I come home that’s my place of refuge. I think that the built environment if it’s done properly and it’s respectful of who they are and it’s built in a sincere way, it really can do that for them.
Dr. Lisa: Ted I’m very excited for all the work that you’re doing and I’m glad that you were able to come in and spend time with us. Talking about the book that you’re creating the second edition for, this is Reunion, how we heal our broken connection to the earth along with your coauthor Ellen Gunter and also talking with us about the work that you do as part of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes. There’s a lot that you bring to the State of Maine and to probably, I think beyond borders of the State of Maine. I’m really thrilled to have you here today.
Ted: It’s great to be here Lisa. Thank you so much.