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Code for America hosted Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu for a discussion of their recent book, "Gardens of the Democracy." In it, they challenge Americans to approach the world not as a machinery that needs to be perfected but as a garden that needs constant attention, discretion, and periodic weeding. The book argues that since society and technology have fundamentally changed, so must our notions of citizenship and democracy: turning "the machine" into a garden. 

"To promote the wider arguments in the book, Lewis and Conaty produced a series of very short articles. The following Special Report features their series on Community Land Trusts, Mutual Home Ownership, the Garden City Model and the Co-operative Land Bank. The Garden City Model merits special attention, as Garden Cities that took land out of the market were a full expression of radical socialist and co-operative economy planning. Nowadays, a number of parts of the world are showing an interest in reviving them."

If we want a high-growth society with broadly shared prosperity, and if we want to avoid dislocations like the one we have just gone through, we need to change our theory of action foundationally. We need to stop thinking about the economy as a perfect, self-correcting machine and start thinking of it as a garden.

Morag lives amidst an award-winning permaculture education garden in a UN recognised permaculture village, and works with city farmers, school farmers, community gardeners, and educators. She sees the direct social and ecological impact of industrial farming on marginalised farming communities around the world - in Indonesia, India and most recently in East Africa.

Economic Gardening embraces strategies to grow existing second-stage businesses. It is an innovative entrepreneur-centered economic growth strategy that offers balance to the traditional economic practice of business recruitment, often referred to as "economic hunting."

Wikiblock is an open-source toolkit of designs for benches, chairs, planters, stages, bus stops, beer garden fences, and kiosks that can be downloaded for free and taken to a makerspace where a CNC router (a computer-aided machine) can cut them out of a sheet of plywood. Most products can then be assembled without glue or nails, and used instantly to make a block better.

Matt Powers is an author, educator, seed saver, gardener, and entrepreneur focused on radically transforming the entire K-12 education system through the collegiate system as well as the economy such that it aligns with regenerative science, natural principles, and permaculture ethics: Earth Care, People Care, & Future Care. Matt, a former public high school teacher with a Masters degree in Education, is the author of the first government accredited permaculture curriculum in North America (fully cited, peer-reviewed, & aligned to national standards), and his work continues to spread in schools, colleges, and universities globally with over a dozen books in 6 languages and 9 online courses.

The choices we make can enhance the vitality of our habitat . . . or diminish it, in the same way as our choices can enhance or diminish the health of our bodies.  At the Livng Systems Institute we explore choices that can enhance the vitality of our habitat.  That begins with a deep mulch gardening system that creates a habitat for whole soil ecosystems in order to produce nutrient rich food.