# A Conversation with Mary Reynolds

Marie Mianowski

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/13518

DOI: 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.13518

ISSN: 2259-8863

**Publisher**

Presses universitaires de Caen

**Printed version**

Date of publication: December 15, 2022

Number of pages: 133-141

ISBN: 978-2-38185-180-8

ISSN: 0183-973X

**Electronic reference**

Marie Mianowski, "A Conversation with Mary Reynolds", *Études irlandaises* [Online], 47-2 | 2022, Online since 08 November 2022, connection on 08 October 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ etudesirlandaises/13518 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.13518

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# A Conversation with Mary Reynolds

Mary Reynolds is a reformed Irish landscape designer, bestselling author of *The Garden Awakening* (Cambridge, Green Books, 2016) and *We Are the ARK* (Portland, Timber Press, 2022), and a nature activist. She grew up on a farm in Wexford and is known for being the youngest woman to win a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2002. She later completely changed her way of working the land as a gardener to become a nature activist and a guardian of the land. Mary Reynolds is the founder of the global, grassroots movement *We Are the ARK* (Acts of Restorative Kindness to the Earth) and her goal is to educate people to live in harmony with nature on their own patch of land – to become “guardians” rather than gardeners. Her career as a landscape designer and latter accomplishments inspired the biographical drama *Dare to Be Wild* (2016).

## Context

The conversation was held via Zoom on 11 April 2022. The aim of this discussion was to learn more about Mary Reynolds's vision for the future of gardens in Ireland in the context of climate change. The goal of the conversation was also to understand the place of pioneering gardeners in Irish society today and to what extent new ways of tending the land were encouraged and taken into account by local councils and governing instances from Mary Reynolds's viewpoint.

**Marie Mianowski:** I would like to situate this conversation as much as possible since this is a virtual interview. In what kind of place or land would you have met me if I had come to visit in Ireland?

**Mary Reynolds:** Everybody expects me to be who I am when I write. But what I have come to realise more and more is I am actually frightened of people in general. So what happens is when I am with people I revert to being somebody who is not quite comfortable and I am not quite as able to be myself. I am really good at looking at ease in conversations but for some reason I don't seem to break through that thing about being able to be open and myself. It's a funny thing. I even really get uncomfortable with people who speak my own language back at me. It's also because I grew up on a farm. It's conservative. And I'm surrounded by conservative people. I don't really have my own tribe, if that makes sense. You have to learn to just either never see anyone [laughs] and just be yourself, or else just need to be really brave and I'm not. In terms of where I would meet you, I guess, ideally, I would bring you somewhere like a woodland, a beautiful woodland. I would bring you to my own place which is developing into an ARK, a wildlife sanctuary.
**MM:** I have been teaching Irish literature for more than twenty years and I have always been a gardener as well, gardening in various environments. In both activities I have often felt that there were too many grids guiding my reading or my gardening actions. And that is one of the reasons why I connected so easily with your approach of gardening and of writing about landscapes and nature. What kind of relationship is there, in your work, between nature, gardens, the land and obviously myths, tales and poetry?

**MR:** Well, certainly poetry. I mean, Yeats's poetry I would feel a very strong connection with, or some of Patrick Kavanagh's poems. They have the same kind of deep connection with the landscape.

**MM:** Obviously your clients reach out to you because they have understood your relationship with nature and the kind of projects that you want to do. But I was wondering what happens once you let go. Is there some point when you decide a garden is "finished", or your job in it is over? Do you think that your clients take over as you would have imagined them doing? And on the other hand, do you have difficulties letting go, letting the garden you have put so much energy in conceiving become what it is meant to become, outside your own power?

**MR:** I have developed my ideas since I wrote *The Garden Awakening* which has changed how I worked completely. These days it is a very different scenario. But when I was still working the way I was in *The Garden Awakening* it broke my heart every single time because my love for their land was never really held when I left. Certainly, when it was anything public, like a hotel, it was never held. I really did not like doing that work. The reason I wrote that book was in a large part a reaction to hoping that people would do it themselves because when you do the work yourself you form a relationship with the land. Whereas when you get somebody else to do it for you, you can't form a relationship with the land. It's like having someone else raise your child and hoping to have a really deep relationship - it's never going to be the same. And so, now I have come around to thinking that we really have to stop controlling land. Full stop. If we want to really return this planet to its health, we really need to start with our own patches of it. And set it free. I have come around to thinking differently.

**MM:** Do you feel that you are a lone wolf, or do you feel that there is a kind of community growing with you?

**MR:** There is a community. The ARK, the We Are the ARK movement<fnref n="1" /> is growing all over the world, which is wonderful. Anyone really, like the Extinction Rebellion people<fnref n="2" /> or the Fridays for Future,<fnref n="3" /> all of those people are looking for solutions and working with land in a different way. Restoring our relationship with the earth through our own patches is one of the solutions, you know, and so there

<footnote n="1">1. https://wearetheark.org</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. https://extinctionrebellionireland.com</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. https://fridaysforfuture.org</footnote>
is definitely a growing awareness, particularly among young people. We have to
change everything, it seems overwhelming, but the solutions are always the same
and very simple and pretty straightforward.

MM: In Ireland specifically, do you have fellow gardeners, “guardians”, as you call yourself, who would link their work with the mythic, archaic Celtic dimension of the relationship with the land?

MR: Not really, no. There are individuals but I don't come across many. You find sculptors, herbalists, people in different fields, but not so much in my field. Because in order to do what I have done you have to give up your work, really. And it's basically like jumping off a cliff. It would be very difficult for most people to do that, I think.

MM: And how do you manage?

MR: I jumped off the cliff as a single parent with two kids and no income. Because I had to. Because I just had to. I didn't really have a choice and I don't mean that from "I am a hero point of view" but it was just awful. Part of my personality does not allow me to compromise when it comes to land and nature and earth. I am a complete disaster in many areas of my life. Most people would say that I am a complete disaster in my career, you know, because I could be working all over the world, making a fortune, but I've never really been good at that, anyway. And I think most people are incapable of saying "I'm not doing this work anymore, unless I start doing it in a way that is not damaging the planet". Because there isn't a market for it out there yet, not really. Because people who have money, they are comforted, they're cushioned from the effects of what we're facing into. And so only the people who are starting to be affected by what we are facing into and who are aware of what we're going towards, want to make the changes. They tend not to be employing people like me, anyway. So it's really about supporting them to do the work through the website I set up "We Are the ARK", through the book that is coming out soon, *We Are the ARK* (Portland, Timber Press, autumn 2022).

MM: Do you think there is a political space for you, a political echo of what you are doing in Ireland?

MR: Occasionally I hear things from politicians saying "stop mowing your lawn", that sort of things. Or "grow lettuces on your windowsills". They are tiny versions of what I am saying, but at least they are saying something! It's not nearly enough but I suppose it is a beginning.

MM: Have you heard of authors such as Sara Baume or Claire-Louise Bennett? They are Irish fiction writers but I find that their fiction is pointing towards changes in the representation of the land, the environment, with a political edge. They point at the changes in nature, at non-human life and question human actions in the environment today, how humans tend their gardens or don't, how nature gets a chance of rewilding abandoned or artificialised spaces. And the literary forms those novels take, the actual writing, is quite innovative, as if to match the changes
towards the land and gardening methods. I don't think your work with gardens and the publication of those novels is a coincidence timewise. I think there really is a kind of subterranean movement, a slow one, but one which corresponds to an actual awareness in Irish society that changes must be made. It is also some kind of acknowledgement to wilderness, or temptation to rewilding. It's not the nostalgic pastoral vein, those are not narratives of a golden age where nature would have been abundant and human people respectful, I think this kind of writing is new and matches the priorities of our time. Claire-Louise Bennett and Sara Baume also move away from writings such as Kevin Barry's *City of Bohane* (2011) which is almost science-fiction, as it takes place in 2054 and the landscape is a mix of Portugal and Ireland with parched land. All this makes me optimistic because to me it is a change that appears through art. Do you consider yourself as an artist in some way?

MR: I suppose I do see myself as an artist. If only because I can't think of any other word. The only time when I feel comfortable is when I am writing and even though I know I am not a writer *per se*, it's when I write that I can truly express who I am. So I guess it's the only way I could try and describe myself.

MM: Do you feel comfortable when you write about gardens?

MR: Not gardens, so much as the underlying energies around that whole concept of land.

MM: You mentioned poetry earlier on. Poetry is really about creating new worlds with words, so I imagined this might be a way for you also to imagine gardens or new possibilities for the land. Creating gardens, taking care of the land appear as poetical acts to me, because it is about creating small worlds.

MR: I think of an author who lives in Ireland, Paul Kingsnorth,<fnref n="4" /> who created the Dark Mountain Project in 2009 and I am going to try and write something for that project and that will be my first effort at exposing myself a bit.

MM: That would be great! I was also wondering what role being a woman played in your caring for the land, wilding the planet and to your professional background as a whole, as garden designer?

MR: Land is the feminine energy. It's being controlled. It's just like a reflection of how we treat ourselves and how we treat the feminine in the world. I know it's a very simplistic way of putting it but that's how I feel. You know we hide under make-up and ridiculous tasks of the human female form in order to feel accepted. Gardens are the same. It's all rubbish really. It's constant control and imposing our own ideas of what is beautiful upon these patches of earth and then insisting that it stays like that and that it doesn't age. It's all about that acceptance of the land as it wants to be or as its true nature and I think that's the key: its true nature and

<footnote n="4">4. See Paul Kingsnorth's website: https://www.paulkingsnorth.net/dark-mountain-writing.</footnote>
what is our true nature. And we’ve got so far away from that that we don’t even
remember the land and what it used to look like. The shifting baseline syndrome
is a great example of that: the fact that only a generation ago people would still
remember that the skies used to go dark for a moment as migrating butterflies
were passing overhead. Things have changed so much and we have forgotten
what is actually natural. And in Ireland there are almost no native woodlands
left. And if you ask kids what do the woods look like they will tell you about the
spruce plantations, you know, and they are dead and dark, devoid of life. We’ve
forgotten what true nature is and that’s a big problem. We are poor reflections
of a dying planet.

MM: In various areas of academia, including Irish studies, there is a movement of decolonising education, gender relations, the land and I think some of your attitudes towards garden making or land caring, towards wilding nature, really echo some of those reactions towards women, nature, education, raising children, working the economy, leading politically – decolonial thinking is a phenomenon that is wider than nature, it is a wider movement. Would you agree with that?

MR: I never thought of it that way but yes I agree.

MM: Another aspect of your work that I found inspiring and even intriguing is the spiritual approach, the sometimes mystical approach also. Do your clients relate to that aspect of your work?

MR: Generally not in Ireland. There is a horror of it. If I work in America there's
a huge acceptance of it. I work in various parts of the world because I don't really
travel anymore, I work online, and there is such a garden I was working on in
Norway the other day.

MM: So you used the word “acceptance”: clients accept the mystical part but do they ask for it? Is it part of why they reach out to you to design their garden?

MR: Yes they do – but not in Ireland. Unless they are not Irish.

MM: And why is that do you think?

MR: I don't know.

MM: My intuition would be that it is because of the weight and power of the Catholic Church in Ireland for generations. Maybe there is a kind of global rejection of all things religious, and therefore spiritual or mystic.

MR: It's a good idea. It's also true of the ARK movement. People rejected it in the beginning because the word *ark* implied that it was connected with some kind of religious organisation. So that's why I turned it into "Acts of Restorative Kindness" so that it didn't have that religious connotation. And then it took off.

MM: So do you think it has to do with the fear of being embroiled in some kind of sectarian movement or is it really the spiritual aspect that people want nothing to do with?
**MR:** I think people have rejected spirituality completely. And I think you are right it is because of what happened with the Church and is still happening. The Church still has a lot of control here. It may not be as obvious but it's still there, within political ideas, educational ideas. It's not as strong as in the 1950s nor the 1980s but it's still there.

**MM:** What roles do folklore and Irish myths play in your work? I mean consciously, because there are probably unconscious influences. Do you consciously link myths and folklore to your work?

**MR:** It was myths and stories that woke up deeper feelings within me when I was young. It was a recognition of a particular energy which really called to me which I found in the land and in folklore, the same kind of energy. So I kind of lean back into those myths. I really see them as signposts of a long time ago, of our ancestors. Those stories and myths are signposts for us if we are to live in harmony with nature. That's what those stories were about, what those myths were about. Often when I am working on a piece of land, whether I tell the client about it or not, it depends the situation I'm in, I will research the land and I'll find the stories associated with that land and find if there is something there that needs to be expressed. So I will actively use that to find my way around a piece of land.

**MM:** What kind of research is it? How do you go about that research?

**MR:** Books, and just history. I end up looking into folklore archives. All sorts of weird and wonderful places, trying to find any reference of that area. It might be related to the name of the area or the name of the local town. You can find information in the weirdest places that will be a signpost for something. Sometimes it can be very, very vague and can be plants that appear on the land and I find folklore associated with those plants which lead me to more knowledge. It could be the star constellation or it could be the clients themselves because the clients themselves will always reflect the needs of the land. Sometimes if the land is very damaged and I can't feel anything out of it I will focus on the clients themselves, get to know them without them knowing I'm actually trying to know them to help the land which will help them. I certainly don't want them to think I am trying to be some kind of a counsellor, because you know, I know I know nothing. So that's how I inform my work. Whether it has an effect or not I don't know. But the interesting thing is for example, I was working with a client in Salt Lake City the other day and the client came back to me after I had presented the design online, and he said the whole place had already changed.

**MM:** In what sense?

**MR:** The energy of the whole place had already shifted simply because I had designed it. And I remember working years ago with a guy here called Joe Mullally and he would be considered I suppose, for want of a better word, a modern druid. He has all the old ways of working from generations ago, of his own past and he would never have put that label on himself, but he taught me many things about land and how to work with that. And he kept saying to me something which was only
answered in Salt Lake City last week, which was: “Mary, you do these designs”, he said, “I’ve seen them – once you’ve done them the land is already healed. You never have to implement them”. And I could never understand what he meant. I never agreed with him. Never. And he kept saying that time is nothing, that the land will find its way back once it’s recognised.

**MM:** And do you think it has to do with what you call “intention”?

**MR:** Yes. Intention and acknowledgment and feeling into a place and having a conversation with it. And there are all these different layers of energy. Yes, it is kind of mystical but it's not something that only I can do. It's something that anyone can do. In writing that book I just want to teach people that it's nothing special or unreachable. I hate it when people make themselves special and say they are the only ones who can do it. It's not true because we can all do this. It's just that we've forgotten. And it's not complicated. It's just being.

**MM:** Being in the place, on the land? Is it a kind of philosophical and spiritual attitude?

**MR:** Yes. Exactly.

**MM:** To what extent is your new book *We Are the ARK* which will be published next autumn an addition to *The Garden Awakening* which was published six years ago in 2016? Or is it something else altogether?

**MR:** It's an addition, I guess. It's something which I forgot. I forgot about all the creatures that are not rooted. I forgot about them. And it's only because I'm not exactly academic, it's all intuition with me and I'm lazy. I kept getting messages about creatures, about foxes and birds and insects and I was too lazy to give them any attention. So eventually I got knocked on the head with it. I got it right and I realised: it's not just about us and the energies that live in these places, it's about all the creatures we're sharing the planet with. And it's just so obvious [laughs]! I just can't believe I didn't see it! And it was also me maybe being too afraid to jump over a cliff that I hadn't really acknowledged that that needed to be done. And so I did. I did acknowledge it and then I jumped over the cliff immediately and started this movement We Are the ARK. The book is basically how to build an ARK and it's about giving half of it back and growing food in the rest. And it's more than enough for growing food for your friends and family who cannot grow food for themselves. You know, knitting communities around growing food. Simple stuff, you know. But it's mostly about saving nature. You know, nature has collapsed in Ireland, absolutely has collapsed over here. It's phenomenal. It's a green desert. It could be such a fabulous flagship, because it's in the perfect position to be a flagship, to teach lessons to the world how we can live in harmony with the rest and grow food and create communities. It's just so hard to understand where to start. Politicians don't know where to start so they've given up altogether [laughs]. At least that might explain why they haven't done anything. One local politician said to me one day: "It's too late". If he thinks that it's too late, probably most of them think that: "We don't know where to start, it's too late".
**MM:** I am not saying it is up to the younger generations to do the work, but maybe the only people, as a community, as a group, who will have the stamina and the faith and the creativity, the political courage and commitment to take actions will be the younger generation. Not that it's their job only. But that it is a fact that older generations of politicians are unable to change their agendas. And when I say young people, I don't mean children under ten, I mean people who are now in their twenties or thirties.

**MR:** There is a possibility, yes. Farmers are more afraid you see for example, the more afraid they become, the more entrenched they become. It's hard to know how things are going to be. There are days when I meet people who are building ARKS and then I think there is hope! Because you only need a small percentage of the population to change before everything changes. I was reading the other day a book<fnref n="5" /> about the 3.5% rule. It's probably a little bit more than 3.5%. It needs probably about a quarter of the consciousness to be shared in order to make a difference. Today I don't feel optimistic. But tomorrow I might.

Marie MIANOWSKI

Université Grenoble Alpes

## References

### Books by Mary Reynolds

*The Garden Awakening*, Cambridge, Green Books, 2016.

*We Are the ARK*, Portland, Timber Press, 2022.

### Websites of the artist

Mary Reynold's official website: https://marymary.ie.

We Are the ARK website: https://wearetheark.org.

### Videos featuring Mary Reynolds (selection)

REYNOLDS Mary, "The Garden Awakening", TEDx Talks, 2016, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZcFYf01ns8.

REYNOLDS Mary, "We Need to Become Guardians, Not Gardeners", Youth Leaders' movement website, 2021, https://www.youth-leader.org/mary-reynolds.

<footnote n="5">5. Erica Chenoweth, *Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know*, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021.</footnote>
*Interviews with Mary Reynolds (selection)*

CLEARY Catherine, “The Great Rewilding: ‘How amazing Ireland would be if we were covered in our own plants?’”, *The Irish Times*, 11 June 2022.

MOORE Oliver, “Interview with Mary Reynolds – Acts of Restorative Kindness (ARK)”, Agricultural and Rural Convention website, 13 September 2019, https://www.arc2020.eu/interview-with-mary-reynolds-acts-of-restorative-kindness-the-other-ark.