I read this on Gijs de Boer his website:
It’s one of many interactions with my plants where I realised I had to deal with an inherited modernist idea of what it means to care. A masculine one too. A protective 'I got this, let me handle it' attitude. In trying to care for my plants, I assumed a role based on control. Control of their growth, the organisms they interacted with, their sad moments – and then I cut off an old leaf.
I recognise my attitude in responses to ecological crises. Geo-engineering, green tech and eco-design are here to fix it for us. And I’ve started to distrust this control paradigm. Not just because it's based on a power hierarchy that strips the care recipient of agency and keeps them dependent. It also just fails. It assumes the knowability of the world, so it can intervene in the best way. And then I scoop out the mould and kill my plant.
In teaching, collaborating, making, I learn ways to hush my inner control freak. Ways of caring that respect and even support the agency of the other, instead of overruling it. Timothy Morton talks about a 'care less' attitude1, but in a way that I interpret as meaning something like 'trust more'. I want to get to this mode when relating to plants. Not just care, but care based on trust rather than control.