Photo-Art for the Planet

By Sw4n4ge

We are offering original and limited-edition photo-art for sale in a variety of formats. Our goal is to launch as many initiatives as our resources allow to provide ways to reconnect with our natural selves. We want to support and foster a shift toward simpler and more sustainable living alongside greater mental well-being and life…

Let’s go foraging

By Sw4n4ge

Even though we can’t yet live on the land, we have been exploring any possible ways to interact with, observe and nurture it. It’s an opportunity to exercise some permaculture ideas and understand its rhythms and cycles. This seems like a very good approach as several different habitats can be found within these three acres,…

How Much?

By Sw4n4ge

If I have one piece of advice so far it is to go and meet the neighbours. As long as you don’t piss them off with imperious attitude and ‘we’re gonna do whatever we want’ language, they can be a fount of goodness and local knowledge. After an uncertain start, we have found our neighbours to be supportive and helpful.

And So It Begins…

By Sw4n4ge

The talk is over (or just revving up). This just got real for us. Found some land. A nice little 3 acre block with outline planning – half forest with a river. It’s on the edge of a Welsh village near the mid coast – not the cutesy Beddgelert with the coffee shops and steam…

The Tyranny of Time Poverty

By Sw4n4ge

The headlong obsession with corporate and economic growth, creates societies of time-impoverished individuals who can easily lose any holistic sense of their place in the environment. In the Western world, the progress of society is measured by capital flows and commercial growth. These financial goals are often put ahead of life values. The pace of…

Let’s Try A New Way

By Sw4n4ge

RECOVERING EDEN has always been a dream of ours but individually, our lives had some other lessons for us to learn first.

I’m Terry, a 61 year old Australian. Mel is 55 and from Wiltshire. We both knew we wanted something different from the life of desperate conformity and relentless capital growth that has brought our existence on this planet to such a precipice. But we ploughed very different furrows until, finally, we were presented with the signs that can no longer be ignored…divorce, disenchantment, burn-out, health issues…a healthy dose of life-sabotage to promote a hand-brake turn onto a new path.

Happily, our respective paths converged and our respective slices of idealism found new resonance. We actually believed we COULD FIND A NEW WAY together.
getting down to earth


Pretty quickly, some practical hurdles became apparent. We weren’t too flush for cash; we weren’t that young or able bodied (plenty of middle-age aches as well as a hip and knee replacement to be getting on with); we had pets that would almost certainly never co-exist in harmony (a young Saluki hound with formidable credentials as a ‘sight-dog’ and a grumpy, late-middle aged cat who has little regard for anyone or anything).

Then there was the question of finding a plot of land and financing an eco self-build.


We want to create a healthy, sustainable and low-impact lifestyle for ourselves but also to inspire, involve and educate others.
This blog is intended as the first step in that direction. YES, the posts contains some articles that present depressing data and sobering statistics. We believe it is essential to foster awareness about the gravity of our global situation and debunk the pseudo-science and denial rhetoric. But we also believe that it is unhelpful to confront individuals only with a punitive message of shame and despair. What we need right now is hope and the belief that we can each make a meaningful difference via measures that are not tantamount to living in grass huts and eating raw berries.



In early 2020, we embarked on the purchase of a 3 acre plot with outline planning consent in Ceredigion, Wales. Then came COVID-19 and a period of limbo from which we are now hopefully emerging.

Check out our next post for details on our land and the initial challenges we face. Meanwhile, here’s a bit more about our ethos.



THE BIG THINGS STAY THE SAME UNLESS WE MAKE LITTLE CHANGES. That is our call to action and our mission is to provide resources and opportunities to interact and learn pleasurable and rewarding alternatives that can help us live more sustainably. Individually, we may not change the world but if we become the change we want to see, then collectively we can be an instrument for global change. Your idea of ‘little’ may differ from ours but we accept the different starting points and mental preparedness we each bring to this challenge. Lao Tsu said it best with, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.



Our intention is to create a sustainable and largely self-sufficient living space with on-site resources to offer teachings in a range of subjects including:
– Mindfulness, meditation and walking meditation
– Art in Nature
– Vegan/Vegetarian Lifestyle Options
– Herbs and Health
– Foraging
– Sustainable Living


Our initiatives are ambitious and exceed our financial reach at this time. But we will continue to engage via this website with information, ideas and resources. We have a range of original nature photography on sale for download at a modest price. We are also offering a SUBSCRIBER ONLY section which contains sustainability tips and detailed guidance based on our experiences and research as well as free full-resolution downloads of our PHOTO OF THE WEEK and access to our cartoon page featuring FLOODED WELLIES. This will help fund this site and our training initiatives. A portion of any subscription or purchase funds will be used to support appropriate tree planting.


Thank you for visiting RECOVER EDEN. Let’s make a difference together.

Mindfulness and Climate Change

By Sw4n4ge

The following contains excerpts from the article of the same name by Menchi Liu, MA, and Emily Valente, MA The reality of climate change is now being acknowledged by an expanding circle of authorities. Its effect on human lives is now clearly visible and impossible to ignore. It has already touched every element of our lives, from…

Meat IS Murder (for the environment)

By Sw4n4ge

The following contains excerpts from Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth by Damian Carrington in The Guardian 31 May 2018. Next time you console yourself with the thought that there is little you can do as an individual to alter the fate of the environment, consider this:…