Gardening is About More than Just Planting Trees

At face value, home gardening seems like an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint and make a positive climate impact. While this is often the case, home gardening also reveals many of the complexities, contradictions, and difficulties of larger-scale climate initiatives. It sounds counter-intuitive, but such is the logic of many of today’s sustainability trends and policies.

For starters, gardening isn’t guaranteed to positively impact your local ecosystem of the global climate. The sad truth is that many, if not most, gardeners are unaware of the extent to which their backyard planting projects can become net emitters and sources of pollution. That’s a big problem when you pause to consider that more than half of Americans garden these days.

There are plenty of reasons why this is the case, but fertilizer and pesticides are among the main culprits. Artificial fertilizers are almost always produced through carbon-intensive processes. The best and most sustainable approach to fertilizing your garden is always to compost. It's the best way to dispose of organic waste; you end up saving on costs, and it's friendlier to the ecosystem. But at the same time, not all natural composts are equal here. Our goal has to be peat-free compost. Why is that?

Peat is a type of soil harvested (without replacement) from peatlands and marketed to gardeners as compost. It can take up to 10 years for peatlands to regenerate just one centimeter of the soil, making the practice entirely non-renewable and unsustainable. But herein lies another problem; one that sheds light on the interconnectedness of seemingly different systems. Peatlands, like permafrost, have long functioned as holding grounds for excess CO2. Human activity has begun to set off cascade effects that ripple through various ecosystems to compound the negative effects of climate change. Increased global temperature leads to the melting of permafrost, which in turn inadvertently releases vast deposits of additional CO2 back into the atmosphere. It's a vicious cycle. Ironically (and tragically), the demand for natural compost, which is mostly born from concern for the environment, leads to the excavation of peatlands and the release of CO2 they've stored for millennia.

In order to adequately respond to the climate crisis and to cement real, sustainable systems, we need to take a more holistic approach. We must appreciate the complexities of today’s supply chains and consumer markets and their interconnectedness with the biosphere on every level. That approach can start as close as your backyard.

I mentioned pesticides as one of the other main culprits in unsustainable farming. Like artificial fertilizers, pesticides are produced through carbon-intensive processes. While true, this fact alone fails to recognize the root cause of pesticide demand, which can largely be attributed to the planting of non-native species. Native species typically require far less intensive care, which makes sense – they’re naturally adapted to survive in their respective ecosystems. Responsibly planting them is also one of the most effective ways to restore local ecosystems after decades, if not centuries, of degradation. Native plant species beget the flourishing of native insect and pollinator species, and so on. Ecologies are inclined toward balance. Rewilding and promoting native biodiversity are ultimately ways to restore that balance. With that, we inevitably reduce, if not eliminate, the need for the products that are most harmful to ourselves and the planet.

Gardening is one of the best opportunities to put sustainable intent into action. Because of that, we should encourage ourselves to get as much out of the practice as possible. When we step beyond our understanding of gardening as just a means to reduce CO2 emissions, we can start to learn so much about sustainability itself, both in its complexities and potentialities. We can start to utilize it as a means to connect deeper with systems with which we are inextricably interwoven.

If you’re interested in learning how to make your own compost, we recommend checking out this video from GrowVeg for an easy, comprehensive look at all the steps!