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Sustainable Gardening

Sustainable gardening, also known as urban gardening, is the concept of growing plants and produce that will do no harm to the environment in the long run by using recycled materials and non toxic chemicals in the process. This practice is mostly done in urban areas to promote fresh produce in highly dense industry areas. It comprises a disparate group of horticultural interests that can share the aims and objectives associated with the international post-1980s sustainable development and sustainability programs developed to address that humans are now using natural biophysical resources faster than they can be replenished by nature. These groups include home gardeners, and members of the landscape and nursery industries, and municipal authorities, that integrate environmental, social, and economic factors to create a more sustainable future. Benefits of sustainable gardening also include improved access to fresh foods and biodiversity in cities. Making sustainable gardening a social norm is much needed in today’s society due to rapid decline in natural resources, toxic environments caused by industries, and climate change.

Sustainable Sites Initiative

The Sustainable Sites Initiative is a commercial accreditation body in USA which certifies landscapers and sites using guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable land design, for which their registered trademark can be earned after a fee. It was founded in 2005. Using the United Nations Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainable development as a model, it defines sustainability as:

...design, construction, operations and maintenance practices that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

by attempting to:

...protect, restore and enhance the ability of landscapes to provide ecosystem services that benefit humans and other organisms.

There is no uniform national standard for a sustainable landscaping project in the USA. Sites are rated according to their impact on ecosystem services: The following ecosystem services have been identified:

• Microclimate regulation
• Air and water purification
• Water supply and regulation
• Erosion and sediment control
• Hazard mitigation
• Pollination
• Habitat functions
• Waste decomposition and treatment
• Global climate regulation
• Human health and well-being benefits
• Food and renewable non-food products
• Cultural benefits

The American Community Gardening Association (ACGA)

The American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) has a list of 114 community gardens and organizations in 35 states on its website (American Community Gardening Association 2009). A national nonprofit organization that started in Milwaukee, Wisconsin called Growing Power began an urban garden for locals to use and take care of. The organizer’s decided to branch out to Chicago which led to the creation of Milwaukee Urban Gardens (MUG) in 2000, which established a total of nine gardens in different socioeconomic areas throughout the city by “seeking land and working community groups to preserve, develop and maintain community gardens” How the organization made sure to establish community gardens in neighborhoods like the north of downtown in the Harambee neighborhood, which is a predominantly impoverished African American neighborhood with over a hundred city-owned vacant lots to put to use. One issue that seems like a positive outtake is how the conversion of the lots into gardens pushed for the higher property values, which causes inflation of already poor neighborhoods. However, it did lower crime rates, improved the community, and of course the access to fresh produce.

The Neuland Project in Germany

As human activities like greenhouse gas emissions, uses of genetically modified organisms (GMO), toxic fertilizers, and bigger industry factories increase, the Earth is unable to replenish itself at the rate it is being destroyed. The Neuland project, which is in Cologne, Germany, is an example of the costs, the time, the effort, and the benefits of having a sustainable garden in an abandoned area. “Urban gardening makes a significant contribution to sustainable and social urban development, especially against the backdrop of advancing urbanization and…other challenges, such as resource scarcity and increasing environmental problems, which can only be overcome with innovative and sustainable approaches” In 2011, groups of citizens came together to revitalize wasteland into a garden for communal use to not only restore wasteland, but also, “offer a consumption-free public space as a meeting place for people of all ages, nationalities, and social classes”. This new space was allowed for educational purposes to promote positive growth in the environment through teaching kindergarteners, college students, or citizens who wanted to learn/give back to their community. Throughout the years, passionate locals would have fundraisers, festivals, and concerts at the community garden to help fund the urban garden project. However, the biggest issue faced with this project was funding because everything was supported through grants and donations. Since this land was open to the public at all times, it began to not be taken care of properly and people started stealing, which made the garden have specific open hours to regulate the people that go in and out of it causing funding to go down as well. However because of citizens taking actions in the beginning, there was a sense of community building, which led to leisure time outdoors, the allowance for local resources to be produced and used that allowed for healthier food options with the control over soil and fertilizers, and the usage of vacant land to promote cleaner air in an urban area.

Industry Plants VS Sustainable Gardening

The idea of smaller scale farming to produce a more sustainable ecological future versus large scale industrial agriculture that produces toxic waste to consumers and the environment is not a new invention. However, since the mass inflation of big industry plants, there has been a huge irreversible impact on the Earth’s atmosphere and surface from major emissions of greenhouse gasses, ozone layer depletion, agriculture poisoning, GMOs, inhumane mass production of livestock, and unregulated agriculture. The excessive machinery use, contamination of groundwater and soil through agrochemicals,  and high rates of carbon emissions because of the overuse of fossil fuels. Due to the high efficiency of production in industrial agriculture, it is favored in the eyes of capitalism to increase the scale of farming, which affects land control in rural areas and overall environmental concerns. “Agro-ecological” farming, which is the invention of using more eco-friendly agrochemicals to produce more safe and organic produce, is an example of efforts to promote more sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture by the state government of Rio Grande, Brazil (1999-2002). Through these efforts, a smaller scale and more labor intensive food production would provide a more sustainable alternative to the crisis on the environment and be more energy efficient by not wasting so much fossil fuels. However, this would mean lower labor productivity, lower earnings, and low opportunity costs compared to a larger scale farm. The negatives of big industry agriculture taking over rural areas that are tearing down communities and habitats, which supports why there should be gardening in urban areas as well to promote more local growth and communities.

Principles

Enhancement of ecosystem services is encouraged throughout the life of any site by providing clear design, construction and management criteria. Sustainability requires that environmental, social and economic demands are integrated. Guidelines supplement existing green building guidelines and include metrics (benchmarks, audits, criteria, indexes etc.) that give some measure of sustainability (a rating system) by clarifying what is sustainable or not sustainable or, more likely, what is more or less sustainable.

Impacts of a site can be assessed and measured over any spatio-temporal scale. Impacts of a site may be direct by having direct measurable impacts on biodiversity and ecology at the site itself, or indirect when impacts occur away from the site.

Site principles

Compost heap at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

The following are some site principles for sustainable gardening:

• do no harm
• use the precautionary principle
• design with nature and culture
• use a decision-making hierarchy of preservation, conservation, and regeneration
• provide regenerative systems as intergenerational equity
• support a living process
• use a system thinking approach
• use a collaborative and ethical approach
• maintain integrity in leadership and research
• foster environmental stewardship

Measuring site sustainability

An example of a property using the xeriscaping. This method reduces the need for water which is often in limited supply in arid regions.

One major feature distinguishing sustainable gardens, landscapes and sites from other similar enterprises is the quantification of site sustainability by establishing performance benchmarks. Because sustainability is such a broad concept the environmental impacts of sites can be categorized in numerous ways depending on the purpose for which the figures are required. The process can include minimizing negative environmental impacts and maximizing positive impacts. As currently applied the environment is usually given priority over social and economic factors which may be added in or regarded as an inevitable and integral part of the management process. A home gardener is likely to use simpler metrics than a professional landscaper.

Three methods for measuring site sustainability include BREEAM developed by the BRE organization in the UK, Leed, developed in America and the Oxford 360 degree sustainability Index used in Oxford Park and developed by the Oxford Sustainable Group in Scandinavia.