What is Eco-Gardening & Why is it Important?
Simply put, eco-gardening is working with — and not against — nature. The goal of eco-gardening is to achieve a beautiful, sustainable, and biodiverse garden that provides maximum health to humans, plants, pollinators and animals, now and for future generations.
Through limiting carbon emissions, promoting biodiversity, and conserving resources, eco-gardening works to achieve that goal.
Let’s look at each a bit more.
1: Limits Carbon Emissions
Through intentional planting of trees and shrubs, CO2 emissions can be reduced. How? Because all plants absorb CO2 through their leaves and store carbon in their tissues. Trees and shrubs, however, can store larger amounts of carbon due to their size and long lives.
Additionally, eco-gardening involves limiting chemicals, which helps to decrease your overall carbon footprint. In some cases, it can even prevent your garden from being a source of nitrous oxide.
2: Promotes Biodiversity
By growing and nurturing an eco-friendly garden that focuses on healthy soil, you’re promoting biodiversity — a vibrant range of plants, pollinators and wildlife. This leads to an overall healthier garden and habitat, resulting in better plant quality and crop yields.
3: Conserves Resources
Lastly, eco-gardening conserves resources — especially water. By limiting water usage (and following wise watering practices) you will work to preserve this valuable resource. And, together with limiting (or ideally eliminating) the use of chemicals, also protecting the quality of this resource. Eco-friendly gardeners use rain barrels and other collection systems to get water without having to use private or municipal sources of water.
We hope you consider implementing your own eco-gardening practice. To help you get started, download our free Garden Audit to learn how eco-friendly your current gardening practice is — and make an action plan for what’s next.
