SwallowTail Butterfuly and a Wild Iris

Here, a valley, nurtured by a seasonal stream and forested with cottonwoods, several varieties of willow, Coast Live Oak, Madrone and Manzanita shrubs, rises up rolling hills of soft native grass and onto striking, magnificent plateaus overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The workings of an unknown power greater than that of man are visible at every step but here is the irony and the appeal.  If not for man’s productive energy, those very steps taken to cross Liberty Garden would be blocked by tangled and impenetrable foliage.  Left untended, the sternness and wildness of the land would result in barriers of wasted swamp, thistle, briar and poison oak.  Nature's fairest of creations would  close off for want of the touch from human hands.  The varied and abundant wildlife that now lives here would no doubt be left without a home. 

The essence of his idea is that the very international and regional organizations that work in cooperation with one another to insure "sustainable" conservation methods of land management, comes at the expense of abolishing private property.

In Liberty Garden, Michael Shaw has rediscovered the principle that the fullest measure of human productivity results, when the man who farms his land is allowed the freedom to do so.  The result of this ‘abundance ecology’ strategy of weed management is that the environmental quality of Liberty Garden far surpasses that which results from following the mandates of governmental policy agendas.