Sue: So this is a tire retaining wall. We made it by taking off one of the walls, one of the sidewalls of the tires, and then turning them inside out. So they look more for the same. And I planted them with succulents and various kinds of herbs, like Thyme and Rosemary and so forth.
Courtney Brooke: So how long has this wall been here?
Sue: Well, I would say it’s been here maybe two and a half years or so. Or maybe three years. I’m not sure. Every year I have to weed it. In some years, I have to put more stuff in it. Somethings die, but I try to keep it up.
Courtney Brooke: How long did it take you to make this wall?
Sue: I don’t remember. I don’t remember a long time, I guess. They call it, tire wrestling, turning the tires inside out, it’s really hard.
Courtney Brooke: Where did you get all these tires?
Sue: From the tire dealers. They have to pay to have them recycled, so they give them away.
Courtney Brooke (she/her) is an ancestor who was a Social Ecologist, Regenerative Designer, and educator whose work aims to reconnect people with a sense of belonging to place. Her work in the world aims to address the root cause of today’s overwhelming ecological challenges – that humans are starved of a sense of belonging to the places they live.
Courtney Brooke was raised on a small farm in North Georgia, and has been guided by a lifetime of living close to the land. Her greatest teachers have been the Appalachian Mountains, the land of Aotearoa, and Selu, the Corn Mother. She holds a degree in Ecology from the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, and has 10 years of experience facilitating earth-based education, ecological landscape design, women’s rites of passage, and cultural healing.
Courtney Brooke has taught and facilitated environmental education curriculum, Deep Ecology, Permaculture Design Courses, hands-on craft and farming workshops, and Holistic Management to a wide range of audiences in nine countries from toddlers to adults and everyone in between.
Deeply committed to spreading the healing that comes from belonging to the places we live, Courtney Brooke is passionate about designing learning opportunities that celebrate life. She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage where she tends the land, raises food, participates in communal ritual agriculture, swims in wild water, enjoys the mysterious blessing of being alive, and tends her own wild Hearth. She loves cooking home-grown and wild foraged foods, playing her flute to the sunrise, running on mountain trails, making compost piles, crafting from natural materials, and bringing people together to create beauty that feeds the holy.
