Planting seeds of wild literacy one tree at a time. Learn to read your yard’s microclimate, garden with nature, and plant trees and understory habitat for generations to come.
We aim for a balanced approach to nature drawing from both head and heart, science and art, utility and beauty.
Wild literacy is a journey, join the wild ride toward nature restoration!
Featured Workshops
Education + Habitat Restoration
Online workshops for Do-It-Yourself gardeners working to restore habitat in the patch of ground you call home. Restore nature, restore yourself. Beginners welcome!
The Heart of Reading Nature
When you notice the weather, or how the birds are behaving around you, you are reading nature. Whether you live in the canyons of city skyscrapers or in mountain wilderness, you are surrounded by nature. Nature is inside you too, we are biological.
What you notice and how you listen, tell a story about your place in nature. Do you feel like a part of nature, or apart? Are you outside looking in, or inside looking out? How we read nature reflects how we understand ourselves in relation with nature. Wild literacy begins with an awareness of the lens from which you tend to read nature. Are you viewing a place from a scientist’s outsider lens, your own feeling of a place, or both? Both head and heart have their place. Reading nature is not just a skill, but an approach that balances different ways of knowing to guide decisions like what tree will thrive here for generations to come?
I think one of the big problems with science that has led to an awful lot of unintentional cruelty is this division between head and heart. And the perception that a good scientist must be totally objective and that emotion mustn’t come into it, to me that’s very wrong. To me, only when head and heart work in harmony can we achieve our true human potential.
– Dr. Jane Goodall on Opening a Dialogue, MasterClass