Compost for the soul roundup: June 2025

Welcome to this month’s compost for the soul roundup!

It’s no secret that I spend a lot of time consuming all sorts of different media about our relationship with the land and the planet more generally. Quite a lot of this is captured in my monthly CPD roundups, but some is not exactly CPD in the conventional sense (and frankly I already do more than enough to meet the requirements of my professional bodies). And rather than letting these brilliant sources of inspiration go un-noted, I share them here, in a monthly roundup of inspiring and moving blogs, podcasts, films, articles, etc.

The idea is to showcase a few things every month that have either shifted my thinking or that have in some other way inspired, uplifted or motivated me over the month. They represent words and ideas that have taken root in my mind, and I offer them to you now, in the hope that you will find fertile ground in your life too.

And if you don’t want to wait a whole month for the next roundup, you might want to follow me on Instagram, where I share one of these every week. In the meantime, you can find previous summaries here.

The Big Food Redesign by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation

Dame Ellen Macarthur has been one of my heroes ever since I was a child – initially for her sailing achievements, but these days for her commitment to helping the world transition to a circular economy through her foundation. And their Big Food Redesign Challenge is no exception. This contribution is perhaps rather more ‘practical’ than some of the more abstract things I tend to share on here, but no less valuable for it – and the video is very jolly! It’s a masterclass in releasing a big idea but making it feel very approachable.

My wish for the future of food is that one day, no matter what product you put in your basket, you are 100% certain that nature is better off as a result of you buying that product.

Available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/the-big-food-redesign-challenge/overview

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

I feel like this is one of those poems that everyone can quote a single line from (i.e. ‘the peace of wild things’ line), but not the whole piece. I’ll only quote a snippet here, to avoid any issues with reproducing licensed material, but it’s not a long poem, and it’s available in full from the Scottish Poetry Library (who I assume have acquired the appropriate copyright etc.!):

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

Available at: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/peace-wild-things-0/

Bonus: The New Yorker did an extended interview with Wendell Berry that is well worth reading. They discussed (amongst other things) his views on the state of agriculture in the US and how it relates to politics and freedom.

Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/going-home-with-wendell-berry

Into the Weeds by Sarah Langford

May might be over, but I still see patches of my town that seem to be practicing No Mow May (though whether that’s by intention or simply through lack of resources to go back to mowing, who can say). As a result, this reflection from Sarah Langford’s Substack on the human relationship with nature and land is still very relevant.

It was really about how we see the natural world and our relationship with it, layering green spaces with our own conditioning and beliefs not about nature but about us. By which I mean: we infuse ourselves into our gardens, parks and communal spaces. When we have been taught what is beautiful and what is good, this directly affects what these spaces look like and, by extension, what can live within them. And what cannot. And what we believe to be beautiful and good is more about us than the places we use those descriptors for.

Available at: https://sarahmaggielangford.substack.com/p/into-the-weeds

Solitary Gardens

I heard about this project at the Soil exhibition at Somerset House, and I can’t possibly explain it any better than Jackie Sumell, the artist running the project, can. Do watch the video on the website – the cell gardens, and the way the children interact with them – are something you have to see, you can’t just imagine.

The Solitary Gardens, are constructed from the byproducts of sugarcane, cotton, tobacco and indigo- the largest chattel slave crops- which we grow on-site, exposing the illusion that slavery was abolished in the United States. The Solitary Gardens utilize the tools of prison abolition, permaculture, contemplative practices, and transformative justice to facilitate exchanges between persons subjected to solitary confinement and volunteer proxies on the “outside.” The beds are “gardened” by prisoners, known as Solitary Gardeners, through written exchanges, growing calendars and design templates. As the garden beds mature, the prison architecture is overpowered by plant life, proving that nature—like hope, love, and imagination—will ultimately triumph over the harm humans impose on ourselves and on the planet.

Available at: https://solitarygardens.org/about

Rhizophagy cycle: Attracting soil microbes

A short but sweet summary of something else that I knew about in broad strokes, but not in detail – apparently a state shared by scientists until fairly recently. What makes this inspirational rather than just interesting? Well, there’s the fact that it’s another example of science finally getting into the weeds (pun intended) of why more organic farming methods are more productive. More importantly, perhaps, it highlights yet again how much complexity there is in our living world. We know this objectively, but every so often you get a glimpse of something that makes that complexity much more graspable. And that’s beautiful.

The cycle shows how plants directly use microbes from soils, explains James, making a direct connection between plant and soil microbiology. “I consider it a vindication for what organic and more latterly regenerative growers have been saying – that it’s not necessarily about chemistry, it’s about microbiology.

“It’s the basis for biological agriculture and we can use microbes to grow healthy, nutrient-rich and stress-hardy crops. It also gives promise that we can grow crops without all of the environmental degradation which occurs when using chemical fertilisers and pesticides,” he suggests.

Available at: https://www.cpm-magazine.co.uk/technical/rhizophagy-cycle-attracting-soil-microbes/