Jo Homan

The history of the New River highlights the ingenuity and perversity of human behaviour. In the 1600s we had an abundant water supply called the River Thames, but we were polluting it so badly we decided to transport water from 20 miles away using a complex and expensive engineering system that took years to build. If permaculture had been invented then, we would have found a much more intelligent way of dealing with the problem, at source.

It’s a brisk Autumnal Monday morning. I’m at Edible Landscapes London, an offshoot of Transition Finsbury Park. This is the cutting edge of no-dig, agroforestry, predominantly perennial and definitely low-maintenance gardening and our practice challenges conventional gardening wisdom. I’m talking about deeply ingrained habits of digging and tidiness. Tell a trad gardener that they’re working too hard, that they don’;t need to dig every year or remove every weed to the compost heap and it’s like whipping the (strictly manicured) lawn from under their feet. They wince and clutch onto the spade handle more tightly.