Garden Care and Activation Energy

A few years back, there was the gardening equivalent of a barn raising at the Princeton public high school, in which some 40 volunteers converged to build 15 raised beds for students to grow vegetables. They were used the first year, not so much the second, and this year they looked completely abandoned when I helped by daughter and her friend to plant one of the 15 raised beds a month ago.

Turned out that looks were deceptive. The grass I took for weeds in some of the beds is actually an experiment with winter wheat. And most of the other raised beds were soon planted by the horticultural students.

But as dry days piled up, a flaw became apparent. There was no easy access to water for the gardens. Making inquiries, I heard back that the spigot on the wall nearby was broken and would be hard to fix.

So it looked like the spigot was going to remain broken, and each watering would require going into the school, finding someone to unlock a custodial closet, push a hose out a window, go back out, water, then go back in to shut off the water and retrieve the hose.

In chemistry, there's something called "activation energy", which is the initial dollop of energy required to get a chemical reaction to take place. People need a similar sort of activation energy to do what needs to be done. For example, the repeated annoyance of a squeaky door may or may not finally lead to a search for some oil to lubricate the hinges. My observation has been that people are much more willing to tolerate repeated annoyance than to take action to prevent the annoyance from recurring.

Thus, even though the process required each time to water the gardens was very inconvenient, it was not sufficiently onerous to overcome the resistance to repairing the broken spigot. The likely result would be that any budding high school gardener would finally get tired of the inconvenience, give up on the watering, the plants would wither and the community investment in the 15 raised beds would be for naught.

So, I persevered, sent a couple more emails, and left a phone message for the head janitor, trying to be congenially persuasive. This input of "activation energy" doesn't always bring results, but in this case the head janitor turned out to be a very nice guy.

His crew took a look at the spigot, came up with a fix and found a hose. Now, the ongoing convenience of the water supply will reduce the energy needed to "activate" the garden's caretakers every time they remember the garden needs watering. It doesn't guarantee success, but makes it much more likely.

Community activators (never much liked the term "activist") push against walls of resistance, hoping one or another will finally budge and some positive change can take place. Usually, the walls don't budge, but in this case a little extra push, and a resourceful staff, was enough to make the wall bear water.