For those of us who have fallen in love with gardening, the numerous benefits it brings to our minds and bodies are beyond dispute. But is it really limited only to our personal well-being or there’s something more to it? Let’s consider the ways gardening closely helps the planet on a larger scale and understand why it’s even more meaningful.
10 Ways Gardening Helps our Planet
Given below are the 10 ways of how gardening helps our plant.
1. Providing Cleaner Groundwater
We’re all aware that our gardens wouldn’t survive long without water, but little do we know that environmental gardening is actually in direct connection with providing cleaner groundwater. So how can your affinity to growing plants help the planet? Let’s take a closer look at the logic behind this.
As we’re expanding our civilization, we’re destroying more and more forests. We’re covering up our cities with impervious surfaces and artificial structures such as asphalt, concrete, bricks.
But all of these structures have one major disadvantage: they cannot soak water, so when the rain comes our way, the excess amount of water quickly ends up in the sewer system thus polluting our oceans, seas, and lakes.
By planting a garden, no matter how small it is, we create an alternative to the modern world surfaces, and we put to use the fantastic ability of plant roots to purify and absorb water, making the planet a cleaner place for everyone.
2. Gardening Reduces Energy Cost
In addition to smartly using our plants as small-scale purifying systems, we can also take advantage of them to reduce energy costs quite significantly. Thinking about the growing demand for energy these days, we can easily conclude that there are two significant fast ways to secure a high electricity bill: trying to keep your home fresh in summer and trying to keep it warm in winter.
Now let’s see how you can make collaboration between you and the plants in your garden so that everyone gets a sweet deal. If you’re trying to escape from the scorching summer heat, you would probably be searching for some shade; the same thing applies to your house as well.
To give your roof a permanent shade in the summertime and to cool the temperature of your home, you can plant a large deciduous tree in your yard. Deciduous trees will provide shade in the summer, but when they drop their leaves in the winter, they will allow the sun rays to reach your rooftop and warm the house.
Except for shielding your roof from the heat, plants can also insulate walls and protect them from extreme weather conditions. Climbing plants, different kinds of vines and espaliers (trees trained into flat, two-dimensional forms which can grow against walls) are the most suitable ones to help you achieve this.
The list of the benefits which this approach involves also expands to reducing noise pollution and ensuring wind protection – hard to think of any disadvantages even if you try to!
3. Environmental Gardening Effectively Reduces Carbon Footprint
So far we had a look at two of the ways gardening helps the planet to be a better place to live in. Now let’s add one more significant advantage to the big picture. As humans “we leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch,” as Lewis Thomas once said.
Unfortunately, one of the primary traces we leave to mother nature is an actual poison to her, literally choking our planet. These are the greenhouse gases we produce (mainly carbon dioxide) to sustain our existence. Driving your car to work, heating your house using coal or gas are simple everyday activities that make our footprint heavier and heavier.
The living plants in your garden can and are reducing this devastating impact by taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.
Also growing a garden to produce your food makes the way that vegetables and fruit travel to your plate significantly shorter by excluding all the resources involved in their transportation. Starting your garden is a small step for you, but a giant leap for the health of our planet.
4. Helps with Wildlife Preservation
Where there are plants, there is life, and there’s no life without our fellow earthlings from the animal kingdom. Not only is environmental gardening reducing water pollution, energy cost & carbon footprint, it’s also creating a safe habitat for some wild animals out there. Now let’s see what we can do on our end to maintain a harmonious shared space both for us and for the wildlife.
The First Thing we can Focus on is Pollination.
We know that pollination is needed for plants to reproduce and to produce tasty fruit and vegetables for us. The best and the most effective pollinators in the insect world are bees, and there are many flowers we can use to attract them to our garden space.
Some great examples are lavender, catmint, salvia, bee balm (monarda), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) and of course the queen of the flowers: the rose. Roses are not only a great way of luring bees to stop by, but they can also be an excellent source for winter food for all kinds of wild birds.
So how does this work? When the time for putting your roses to bed for winter and the cold weather settles in stop deadheading your roses (removing spent blooms) and leave them to form rose hips. Rose hips are a great source of quality food for wild birds in the harsh conditions of the mid-winter season, providing them with energy and saving them from starvation.
5. Gardening helps the planet by keeping us healthy
As permanent residents of our planet, we need to be healthy so that we’re capable of creating and sustaining a healthy environment. But what does it mean to be healthy?
We already saw that gardening could easily give us the key to physical health, but it can also play a significant role in our mental health. Taking care of living plants is proven to have a substantial impact on stress levels and to be a real stress reliever.
It restores our connection with nature and motivates us to spend some quality time away from our phones in an internet dominated era. It also reminds us how it does feel to get your hands dirty, to explore textures and dive into flower fragrances.
Gardening teaches us how to be patient, how to be mindful of the moment, how to improve our creativity and last but not least it can be a great reason to connect with your neighbors using the old-fashioned way of face to face communication!
6. Gardens Keep Air Clean
“Grow plants to keep the air clean.” This is possibly the lesson we learned when we were students. However, as pollution levels rise, it is only now that we fully comprehend the significance of plants in maintaining clean air. Through the process of photosynthesis, plants generate oxygen.
Through their leaves, they absorb CO2, which they then use to assist in exhaling oxygen and water, enabling people to breathe in the fresh air. In addition, plants may purify the air we breathe by eliminating pollutants and pathogens from it.
Therefore, having some houseplants in your flat or a little indoor garden can still mean a lot, although if you don’t have a large backyard garden.
If you are thinking of growing indoor plants to keep the air around you clean, you can consider the following options.
- English Ivy
- Chinese Evergreen
- Dragon Tree
- Chrysanthemum
- Peace Lily
- Spider Plant
- Rubber Tree
7. Prevents Soil Erosion
We’ve all heard the adage that woods aid with soil preservation. Save woods to preserve soil! What is meant here is that the roots of plants and trees in the forest hold soil in one place and prevent it from getting eroded.
Additionally, roots can stop slopes from descending. In this context, it is important to note that plant debris such as leaf litter and other organic elements contribute to the creation of topsoil. This soil helps plants thrive since it is very fertile.
Therefore, it is crucial to prevent the topsoil from being eroded by wind, rain, or any other type of running water. Maintaining a significant number of trees is essential for this goal.
8. Reduces Global Warming
Nowadays, global warming is such a threat that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 is devoted to combating it. The mission statement of SDG 13 is to “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”
While governments from various countries are collaborating to work towards this statement, we, as individuals, can also make our contribution. How? Through the promotion of gardening.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas that captures radiation from the sun in the atmosphere, raising the earth’s temperature. Too many greenhouse gases are to blame for global warming. The only way out of this issue is to plant more trees.
We say this because trees can absorb and hold up to a ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air through photosynthesis. In turn, this aids in reducing the environment’s rising temperature. So, even if you do not have a huge backyard, you can grow indoor plants in small pots and planters.
9. Organic Gardening Keeps Chemicals At Bay
Most of the time, it becomes necessary to apply pesticides and other chemicals to assure crop protection and higher yields to provide food for millions of people. But you can completely organically garden at home, on a smaller scale. Chemicals are truly not necessary to maintain the health of your plants.
To improve the soil instead, you can use organic compost and manure. Companion planting is another option for maintaining plant health and warding off pests and illnesses. These sustainable farming/ gardening practices benefit the environment by lowering carbon footprints and improving our health by making available nutritious, pesticide-free produce.
10. Reduces Noise Pollution
Trees reduce not only air pollution but also noise pollution. In today’s urbanized society, environmental noises brought on by machinery, transportation, oil drilling, etc., constitute a major issue.
We are frequently exposed to noise levels above 130 dB, leading to numerous health problems, including ear pain, cardiac arrest, tension, and worry. But fortunately, trees can be used to solve this issue. A row of dense trees can physically restrain high decibel sound.
So, cultivating gardens might be a great choice if you wish to enjoy a tranquil environment. You may create a calm environment for the rest of the community as well as some peace for yourself by growing plants.
FAQs
Gardening is not just about sprucing your yard or lawn but also benefiting the whole planet. Here are some of the most convincible ways gardening helps the globe.
• Reduces CO2
• Increases oxygen
• Maintains the global temperature
• Improves soil quality
• Beautifies space
• Reduces the size of landfills
• Protects wildlife
• Reduces carbon footprint
• Keeps pollution under control
One could think of a home garden as a scaled-down version of a communal garden. On a micro level, a house garden can provide access to food, beautify the area, enhance air quality, and so forth. In summary, home gardening can assist solve food hunger and inequalities as well as offer health advantages, opportunities for employment, etc.
In a single sentence, we can say that gardening makes the earth a more liveable place. But if you want to learn how gardening is important in detail, please refer to the post above.
Community gardening not only boosts this activity but also enhances socialization. In addition, gardening helps improve access to healthy food, reduce health ailments, provide nutrition to the larger community, and so on.
Gardening enthusiasts can get together and start gardening activities at the neighborhood level. This can enhance the socialization of many communities. Additionally, they unite to celebrate several flower and garden festivals, such as the tulip and cherry blossom festivals.
Conclusion
The more we explore the benefits of gardening, the more it becomes apparent that it’s so much more than just a hobby to keep your mind busy. It’s a way of living and understanding the world around you, a way to keep yourself and the planet healthy and it’s also easy on the pocket. There’s not even a single downside to taking up gardening or for loving it long-term if you’re already into it!
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