What are the factors that contribute to a sustainable garden? If you’re avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, that’s a great start. But gardening sustainably goes far beyond this by adopting a whole systems approach. Find out what this means and how you can practice sustainability.

It seems obvious that gardens would be sustainable. After all they’re teeming with plant life, and what’s green has got to be good, right? Well, maybe…
Sustainability means that, as we meet our needs today, we ensure genertions to come can meet theirs as well. It’s a pretty fundamental and logical ethic for conducting ourselves!
So, how do our gardens measure up? If you’re going organic by avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, that’s certainly a good start. But gardening sustainably goes beyond the avoidance of chemicals, to taking a whole systems approach and being deliberate about choices each step of the way.

01

Right from the start

Does it really matter where your seeds, bedding plants, or shrubs come from if your plan is to raise them organically once you get them? If they haven’t been adapted to a climate like your own or chosen for diverse traits, they’re not apt to thrive without undue coddling or chemicals. And remember, we’re thinking big picture here. Are huge tracts of sprayed seed stock or a few giant companies entrusted with seed genetics really sustainable sources?

Quick win

Prolific gardening author and columnist Marjorie Harris warns it’s a waste of money to buy cheap plants—quality sources will pay off in the end. But that doesn’t mean you can’t stick to a budget by getting perennial cuttings from a neighbor or attending a local seed swap.

Go long

Save some of your own seeds from year to year and create locally adapted varieties.

02

Keeping the roots in good health

Both literally and figuratively, soil is at the root of plant wellness. Two strategies are key here:

• Disturb the ground as little as possible so as not to damage the intricate microbiology.
• Keep it protected with mulch or cover crops.

Quick win

Cover bare earth with a mulch of leaves, weed-free straw, wood chips, or herbicide-free grass clippings. A living mulch like clover makes a good ground cover in pathways or between plants; plus, it releases nitrogen when you trim it down. Or try sowing a cover crop like ryegrass, field peas, or buckwheat in the fall.

Go long

Invest in hardy perennial plants, like berry shrubs and asparagus, which require no annual soil disturbance.

03

The right garden nutrients

Plants require nutrients, of course, and each season they pull these out of the soil to feed their new growth and fruit. A healthy ecosystem endlessly cycles these nutrients through animal droppings, decaying plant matter, and soil biology.

By contrast, in our gardens we lose much of that fertility by shipping it off in our green bins or flushing it down the toilet once it passes through us. If we have sustainability in mind, we’ll look for ways to hold more of those nutrients on site and replenish the soil naturally.

Quick win

Make your own compost, sending only unwanted organics like meat bones or pet litter to the municipal facility. You get quality control and avoid needlessly trucking fertility off your property.

Go long

If your local bylaws allow, consider incorporating small animals like chickens or rabbits into your system. Their manure, when properly handled, becomes rich plant fertilizer.

04

Waste no water

Water is both essential and precious, so how do we ensure there will always be enough to go around? Choosing well-adapted plants, enriching the soil so it can hold more water, and mulching to reduce moisture loss are all good places to start.

Harris advises us to “use water really carefully,” with hand-watering being the surest way to do this. Harvesting rainwater makes use of a freely available resource and puts less strain on limited municipal water supplies and infrastructure.

Quick win

Install a rainwater capture system. Keep it small and simple or go big by tailoring it to your rainfall potential and needs (try the tools at harvestingrainwater.com) or having it professionally installed.

Go long

Plant along the contour lines of your site (lines formed by following a single elevation across your property) so your plantings will passively catch and retain water as it flows from higher to lower elevations.

05

Plant a variety of species

If our aim is a garden that can continue to fill our needs without depleting our common resources, it really needs to maintain its own balance to some degree just like a healthy ecosystem.

Encouraging a diversity of species—plant, insect, microbe, etc.—on our site is just the way to do this. Including plenty of perennial and native plants in the mix also makes for a hardier community since, as Harris writes, “A garden with nothing but annuals is not sustainable, nor is a garden with only exotics.”

Quick win

Plant flowers such as Phacelia, chives, and Angelica to attract pollinators and beneficials, and apply mulch to keep the soil microbes happy while providing habitat for spiders (voracious insect predators).

Go long

If local bylaws allow, consider beekeeping for increased pollination in your garden and neighborhood (plus the reward of sweet honey!).

06

Rethinking your garden

Once you adopt the mindset of sustainability there’s really no limit to what you might rethink. For instance, should a trip to the garden center factor into the overall sustainability of your garden? Sure, why not?

If you’re able to put a basket on your bike and cycle to your destination instead of driving, so much the better. You’ll have gotten fresh air and exercise, shopped local, produced zero emissions, and maybe bumped into a neighbor along the way. That’s a garden practice I think we’d all be happy to sustain!

07

Pro tips for sustainable gardening from Marjorie Harris

Do

• Accept your site and work with what you’ve got (soil type, for instance).

Don’t

• Use peat moss—it’s sterile (contributes nothing to soil life) and non-renewable.
• Use a leaf blower—it blasts away your good topsoil, compost, and mulch (while burning gasoline).

08

Stock the shed

Look for the following supplies for your sustainable garden.

Open-pollinated seeds: These include many heirloom varieties and will “breed true,” meaning the seeds can be saved from year to year.

Fertilizer: Naturally derived sources are useful, like fish or seaweed fertilizer, worm castings, bone and blood meal, or well-rotted manure from a clean local source.

Materials for bat and mason bee boxes: Build from a kit or scrap lumber to provide habitat for these beneficial species.

09

Support your plants

Plant supports: These can include natural materials that are biodegradable, such as bamboo stakes and hemp or cotton twine; salvaged items, like shoelaces or an old gate; or materials built to last, like a wrought iron trellis.

Pest controls: Start with a cloth row cover as a physical barrier; benign caterpillar pesticide Btk (Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki); or a spray bottle for targeting pest outbreaks with homemade soap solutions.

10

Hand tools

The metal in garden tools is non-renewable and requires mining, so rather than picking up cheap ones that will bend, break, and be discarded, invest instead in a small number of well-made hand implements—bypass pruners, trowel or hori hori knife, long-handled weeder, rake, and spade.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if a single activity could improve mental and physical health, boost quality of life, cost next to nothing, and be a downright pleasure to boot? The humble act of gardening, it seems, holds all of these benefits with a downside no greater than a little dirt under the fingernails.
The beauty of it is that gardening in some form is available to us all. Whether we’re seeking a crop of edibles, an ephemeral cluster of blossoms, or a task to quiet the mind, it hardly matters: a garden delivers on so many levels. Being out of doors in the company of plants might be just what the doctor ordered! Consider these advantages.

Contact with nature

Science is catching up with what many of us have long known intuitively: humans are healthier when they spend time in the natural world. With roughly 81 percent of Canadians living in towns and cities, regular access to pure wilderness can be hard to come by.

But nature in its many urban forms is all around us—non-human species living out their processes and relationships; the weather and seasons touching every yard and alley. Gardening gets us up close and personal with not only the plants but also the insects, birds, soil, and even minerals that go hand in hand with them.

Healthy mind

We don’t immediately think of gardening as an intervention for depression and anxiety, but studies show it can function in exactly that way. In fact, time spent among and tending plants is considered an official mental health treatment: horticultural therapy.

Horticultural therapy

The healing power of gardening is considered so effective that an entire field of psychological treatment has been built around it.

Mitchell Hewson, a leading horticultural therapist at the Homewood Health Centre in Guelph, Ontario, describes the therapy this way: “Its positive effect on clients, including those who suffer from post-traumatic stress, dementia, addictions, and other forms of mental illnesses, are borne out by both anecdotal and empirical evidence. Through the use of ‘living’ materials—flowering plants, fruits, vegetables, and herbs—horticultural therapy stimulates thought, exercises the body.

There’s a profound sense of accomplishment that comes from stewarding something edible or beautiful to fruition, and plants’ seasonal renewal provides reason for optimism. Gardening also tends to improve self-esteem, overall life satisfaction, and cognitive function. Who wouldn’t like a healthy dose of all three?

Healthy body

In the same way that needing to walk the dog gets us off the couch, plants under our care propel us out into the sun and into regular physical activity. It’s recommended that adults get a minimum of 2 1/2 hours of exercise weekly; gardening is one way to achieve this.

Having an enjoyable way to stay active means that, in addition to our garden crop, we can reap the preventive effect exercise has on chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

Garden soil itself confers a surprising health perk, as exposure to soil microbes when we’re young is integral to a well-functioning immune system throughout life. And let’s not forget the all-important vitamin D we soak up when we expose our skin to a little sunshine out there!

Family and community

Gardening has its rewards as a solitary endeavour, but it can just as easily open the door to rich friendships and family time. Those who garden in shared plots report an enhanced sense of community and social ties, an important antidote to loneliness. Community gardens are also a source of resilience in the face of the unexpected, such as natural disasters.

And as far as ways for our kids (and grandkids) to pitch in, spend time with us, and engage with the natural world, it doesn’t get much better than plants they can get their hands on, watch grow, and even eat.

Healthy food and finances

Not only is the act of growing our own fruits and vegetables good for us, but consuming them is too. Associated with everything from better vision to decreased risk of chronic illness, a fruit- and vegetable-rich diet is easy to adopt when the products are close at hand, at their freshest and most flavourful.

Both children and adults are more apt to go for the good stuff when they’ve had a hand in growing it. And as the price of produce continues to rise, gardening can be an important cost-saving measure, allowing us to feed ourselves well on a budget.

Cramped in the city?

Consider these gardening solutions for tight urban living.

• Compact and vertical – plant hanging tomato or strawberry baskets, upright pallets filled with soil, window boxes, or wall-trellised climbers such as peas or beans.
• Raised bed – a tightly contained growing area can be created at an accessible height.
• Use shade – annual or perennial edibles or ornamentals adapted to less sunlight can fill unoccupied shady areas.
• Rooftop – with permission and access, the flat roof of an apartment or workplace can host pots or small raised beds (be sure it can handle the added weight).
• Front yard – sometimes overlooked, front yard space is ideal for those who like to share or socialize with neighbours or passersby.
• Community gardens – join or consider starting one yourself.
• Others’ turf – cultivate a willing neighbour’s extra space, work the garden of a public or private facility or your workplace, or swap help for veggies at a local community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm.

Jackie Skrypnek is a holistic nutritionist, permaculture gardener, and all-round food enthusiast. She creates nourishing breakfasts for the guests at her tiny house B&B in Cochrane, Alberta. hereaboutsbnb.com

This article was originally published in the April 2020 issue of alive Canada, under the title \”Gardening\’s Good for What Ails You.\”

Planting perennial foods offers rewards beyond those of an annual vegetable garden. Discover the many benefits of growing your sustenance with nature as your mentor and some tips to get you started.

Growing a garden typically conjures the image of a tidy plot of soil planted with rows of neatly tended veggies, pulled up in the fall and sown anew each spring. But there’s another way to raise food, one that more closely mimics a natural community of plants growing year after year without tilling or tending: a perennial food garden.

Practical perennials

Whether it replaces or simply complements that annual veggie patch, a perennial food garden can hold both dietary and ecological rewards.

If you have so much as a raspberry cane or a tuft of chives, you’re already acquainted with edibles that reappear every year. Expand that into a mixed berry patch or collection of herbs and you’re getting closer to a perennial food garden. Integrate plants that complement one another through a diversity of sizes and functions and you build something that resembles how nature gardens, something you could call a “food forest.”

But why diverge from the familiar and well-loved plot of tilled loam to grow food? It turns out nature is something of an expert, and when we emulate her more closely, the benefits are many.

Less labour

Perennials endure for years, if not decades, so rather than planting every spring, we need only plant them once. And because we’re not digging into the soil each year, stirring up the weed seeds, there’s far less need for tedious pulling of those unwanted plants. Mulch and ground cover are allies in weed suppression, too.

Further, the annual chore of replenishing garden fertility can instead happen the same way it does in a forest, through plant-animal-fungi synergies and nutrient cycling.

Greater soil integrity

We’re just beginning to fully grasp the hidden workings of all the life forms in our soil and how crucial they are to everything above ground, including plant health. When soil is tilled, fungal networks and earthworm aerations can be damaged, plus valuable carbon can be lost to the air. And when earth is left bare, as it is after tilling or between rows in an annual garden, its structure and biology suffer under the direct blaze of the sun.

But in a perennial garden, the soil and microbes are left largely undisturbed and covered. Topsoil is actually built through the continual layering and decomposition of mulch and debris from plants left in place.

Resilience

With sufficient diversity, a perennial food patch can be well equipped to bounce back from shocks in the environment and adapt to long-term shifts, just as natural ecosystems do. With several species serving overlapping functions (such as food, pollination, nitrogen fixing, or pest deterrence) the web will still function, and food can still be reaped if one or two members succumb to something like hail or insects.

Not only does that make for a resilient garden, but it also contributes a degree of food security to your neighbourhood.

Many yields

Perennial gardening offers so much more than just food for our efforts. It produces habitat for everything from bees to birds and, of course, all those happy soil micro-organisms. Water, whether from the hose or the sky, is captured, retained, and put to productive use through the network of roots and healthy, intact soil.

Plus, a patch of perennial edibles can easily become a space of beauty in your yard—the backdrop for a bench or hammock and a place to observe nature’s processes. It may even garner you a new friend or two in the form of a curious neighbour or berry-hungry youngster!

Legacy

If you inherit a home from previous owners who gardened, you might be pleased to find yourself with a swath of yard cleared for planting. But if they had the foresight to populate the space with perennial foods, you will have really hit the jackpot.

By investing in long-lived edibles, we serve not only ourselves but also those who come after us, leaving a wake of ecological deliciousness within our lifetime and beyond.

Give these a try

Perennial edibles range from the utterly familiar to the forgotten and the novel. The options are vast, and the ones you choose will depend on your climate, space, goals, and preference.

Form a guild

Not a medieval club for craftsmen, a guild is a deliberate grouping of plants that form a complementary web, working together for their ongoing health and productivity.

Members of a guild can and should fill more than one role. For example, sea buckthorn will grip erosion-prone soil, fix nitrogen for surrounding plants, yield nutritious food, and produce oil for body care. Strawberries provide ground cover, food, beauty as leaves turn red in the fall, and mulch as leaves are dropped in place.

A guild can be a simple grouping of plants or a more in-depth layering of relationships from root to canopy. We can draw inspiration through observation—if ferns tend to thrive in the understory, we would do well to pair them with trees or shrubs that can provide that shade.

Guild planting is a chance to have fun while being creative and flexible. There’s no rule that says you can’t add some annuals to the mix or relocate a plant that isn’t prospering at any point. Perennial plantings will evolve over time; trees and shrubs extending their reach and herbaceous plants expanding or losing territory. This leaves us the choice to heavily prune and manage or let things unfold as they will.

Here are some guild ideas

Expert guidance

Books and online resources can serve as useful guides to choosing and placing perennials.

Here are few of the best:

• Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway (Chelsea Green, 2009)
• Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier (Chelsea Green, 2007)
• Plants for a Future database: pfaf.org