Here, a wide valley of forested cottonwoods and Manzanita trees flow gradually up and across open 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.  Natures 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 find another home.  It would be a much different melancholy land not understood with a light heart but rather the waste of solitude.  

This photographic tour will help to show why Liberty Garden apart from being spectacular, is a very special piece of land.  Over the course of twenty five years of study and stewardship of the land, Michael Shaw has been able to uncover mistaken notions and ideas that have been presented by an orthodox environmental movement.

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, actually causes environmental degradation far and away more harmful to the land than can be imagined.

In Liberty Garden, Michael Shaw has rediscovered the principle that the fullest measure of human productivity follows, when the man who farms his land is allowed the freedom to do so.  The result of this ‘abundance ecology’  is that the environmental quality of Liberty Garden, far surpasses that which results from following the mandates of policy agendas set in place by international regional organizations and global administration.