EARTH-FRIENDLY GARDENING: Why It Matters (2024)

FAQs

How does gardening help the earth? ›

Earth-friendly Gardening benefits the environment.

Support pollinators and natural enemies. Save water and energy. Improve degraded soil for plant health and increased carbon capture. Recharge groundwater to keep it clean and abundant.

Major goals and benefits of sustainable landscaping include water conservation, improving soil health, reducing maintenance labor and organic waste generation, carbon sequestration, and creating habitat through appropriate plant selection.

Trees, hedges, and other plants counter climate change by trapping carbon and emitting oxygen; and worldwide, forests may offset a quarter of man-made carbon dioxide. They also improve the environment by reducing noise, heat, glare, wind, water run-off, erosion and dust.

Gardens that use organic methods and conserve water are much more environmentally friendly than traditional gardens. Additionally, creating a garden that attracts beneficial insects and animals can help to keep your garden healthy and balanced.

Home gardening is a great way to contribute to a better world. It can help reduce the carbon footprint of your food by growing it locally, which reduces the need for transportation and storage. It can also help reduce the amount of waste that ends up at the dump by composting, mulching, or recycling.

Oxygen: Through photosynthesis, plants use carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water to create energy and release oxygen. Recovery from natural disasters: Plants help protect soil from erosion and release nutrients to keep soils fertile.

Reducing Carbon Emissions and Waste

By growing your own food, you are helping to reduce the high amounts of burning fossil fuels that fill our environment as a direct result of importing foods from commercial farmers.

Cost Reduction: Sustainable practices can lead to reduced energy consumption, lower waste disposal costs, and more efficient use of resources, resulting in significant cost savings. Increased Revenue: Sustainability can open new markets and customer segments.

When done correctly, even the smallest backyard plot can produce copious amounts of fruits and vegetables and possibly even a significant saving to the grocery budget. However, it takes time and patience, and a small outlay of money to buy seeds, and tools, if you need them.

What is the most important thing in a garden? ›

Soil: The most important aspect of gardening.

Through gardening, kids learn to appreciate the natural world and the creatures that live in it. They also learn how to care for plants and how to create a healthy ecosystem. In other words, gardening helps instill a sense of respect for nature in kids.

Plants considerably reduce CO₂ and heat stress by absorbing and reflecting solar irradiance, helping to reduce the global warming pollutants associated with waste disposal by turning leaves, grass, woody garden offcuts, and dead garden waste into mulch or compost.

Gardening can make you feel more peaceful and content. Focusing your attention on the immediate tasks and details of gardening can reduce negative thoughts and feelings and can make you feel better in the moment. Just spending time around plants eases stress for many people. Boosts self-esteem.

Sustainable gardening is a type of gardening that focuses on creating an environmentally friendly garden that doesn't deplete natural resources or harm the world around us.

Clearly, if you are growing your own fruits and vegetables, there are no carbon emissions. You grow, wash, and eat it, so carbon emissions are essentially zero. You're even sequestering carbon by growing food on your property.

As trees grow, they help stop climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing carbon in the trees and soil, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Trees provide many benefits to us, every day.

Nature abhors bare soils and is always trying to cover it – with weeds. If we cover our garden with residue, it eventually becomes food for the microbiology in the soil. Cover on the soil also reduces water loss through evapotranspiration, reduces erosion, and decreases soil temperature.

Going Plant-Based Can Have A Huge Impact

A person who eats a plant-based diet produces 50% less carbon dioxide, uses 13x less water, and uses 18x less land than meat-eaters. That saves 1,100 gallons of water, 30 square feet of forested land, and 20 pounds of CO2 equivalent every day!