While there are certain positives when it comes to urbanization, we can also notice how it adversely affects the environment. Many people are aware of this, and thus, they are looking for ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle to reduce the negative impacts that cities and urban areas have on the environment. That’s when urban gardening comes in.
In recent times, urban gardening is becoming more and more popular, as it is a successful solution to the lack of farmland. Bringing many benefits and effects, this sustainable movement has been practiced by over 800 million people worldwide, drastically changing the traditional thinking that farming can only be done in the countryside.
What is Urban Gardening?
Urban gardening (or urban agriculture) is basically the practice of farming and cultivation, but in dense urban and peri urban areas (UPA), where farmland is not available. This is the ideal alternative to traditional farming, as it doesn’t require a lot of farmland or space, which can be considered a treasure in the context of urbanization.
Fun fact: Urban agriculture practices first appeared during the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century and became more popular during the two world wars. Currently, there are approximately more than 29,000 community urban gardens in the 100 biggest cities in the United States.
Depending on several factors such as climate, topography, and budget, your choices of crops and urban gardening practices may vary. The main products of urban farming activities include flowers, ornamental plants, fruits and vegetables, medicinal herbs, or any agricultural products that can be used for daily consumption.
Types of Urban Gardening
Rooftop Gardens
Optimizing your usable space is the key to urban gardening practice. While most areas of your city are covered by buildings and concrete, the rooftop is a promising, untapped space where we can create our own secret garden. Having a rooftop garden can bring significant benefits for the environment, especially in reducing air pollution and urban heat. Also, because rooftop gardens are located on high-rise buildings, far above the noisy, crowded streets, they can be a good place to reduce stress and anxiety.
Rooftop is an open space, so you have a lot of planting options to choose from. From using raised beds to building greenhouses, as long as your rooftop is solid enough to support the weight of all the materials and equipment used, go for it.
However, you also need to consider other factors such as wind power, weather temperature, and rainfall, as they may damage your garden. Use trellis fence to reduce wind power; have a watering system ready for hot weather; prepare a suitable water collection and storage system to collect rainwater.
Vertical Gardens
Have a small space but still want to garden? Then try some vertical garden ideas. This is one of the most optimal types of urban gardening to increase the planting area, especially for small apartments or limited garden spaces.
To build a vertical garden, we grow vegetables and plants on the sides of vertical walls. Fruits and vegetables are planted in layers, and these layers are stacked on shelves or pallets. This allows us to maximize the number of plants in the minimum floor space.
Vertical gardening can help more than just save space. A vertical garden consumes way less water than a regular potted garden, as plants are layered so that water can drop from the top layers to the layers below.
When choosing what to plant for your vertical garden, consider those that are suitable for growing in containers. Plants with shallow roots are also popular choices, because they typically grow better than perennials in a vertical garden.
Microgreens
Microgreens are basically small vegetable sprouts that can be easily grown on window boxes. You can grow most vegetables as microgreens, and they take only 7 to 14 days to be ready for harvest. These vegetables can create an entire microgreen garden on your windowsill without taking too much time and space.
A microgreen garden can make a good source of healthy foods, as these little plants contain about 40% more phytochemicals than their full-sized form. The range of vegetables that can be grown as microgreens is diverse, including carrots, broccoli, cabbage, radishes, and more. You can choose any of them for your microgreen garden to add a bit more nutritiousness to your dishes.
Backyard Gardens
Another familiar urban gardening option that you can choose to grow food on home property. For beginners, a 10-by-10-foot garden is a good start. If you have never tried gardening before, choose three to five plants of different types to begin with. You can expand your backyard garden later once you have experience.
It’s important to understand your backyard first, especially about lighting and drainage. Ensure at least six hours of sunlight a day for your plants. Place tall plants on the north side of the garden so that they don’t block sunlight from reaching smaller plants.
In case your backyard doesn’t drain well, you may want to learn how to build raised garden beds for better drainage. In this case, a 4-by-4 feet or 4-by-8 feet raised bed is a good size to experiment with. We recommend starting your raised garden bed with these vegetables first. Make sure you buy high-quality seeds, and they are easy enough for beginners to grow. When you expand your garden in the future, it would be a good idea to add some flowers. You can check some flower suggestions for raised garden beds.
Community Gardens
Community gardens refer to unused spaces in an urban environment that are utilized as shared gardens. These communal spaces are founded by individuals or communities aiming to create an environmentally friendly connection between people with the same passion for gardening.
If you don’t have an outdoor space for gardening, or the other types of urban gardening don’t work for you, consider joining a community garden. There, you will receive a plot that will be your garden for about 5 years or more. The process of growing plants and caring for them can take place multiple times a year depending on the season, so you may have to go back and forth to visit your garden. Therefore, choose the community garden closest to where you live for long-term convenience and security.
Benefits of Urban Gardening
Urban Gardening and Food Security
The benefits of urban gardening in food security are significant. Food security is the ability to access and afford enough safe, secure food, and to ensure food security means to ensure food supply for the population without having to rely on imports.
That’s what urban gardening can do. This activity can make up for the reduction in land used for agriculture, thus ensuring an abundant local source of fresh, organic simple food. Families and urban dwellers can reduce the dependence on imported crops by enriching their food availability through urban farming.
Urban Gardening and Habitat Creation
Urbanization entails the reduction and fragmentation of natural habitats, and these lead to strong barrier effects that impede or even prevent the ecological connectivity of organisms.
One of the amazing benefits of urban gardening is that it can enhance wildlife habitat in urban spaces. In a world of concrete, glass and steel, urban gardens play an essential role in preserving and creating habitat for many species such as insects, pollinators, birds, etc. The presence of insects and arachnids in your backyard garden is indeed beneficial to nurturing the overall balance of your garden habitat.
Urban Gardening the Reduction of Carbon Footprint
It’s estimated that about 10.76 square feet of an urban rooftop garden is enough to offset the annual carbon footprint of a car. Now you can see how powerful it is in carbon offsetting when we bring together every single urban garden out there.
Also, by utilizing fruits and vegetables from your own garden, you can minimize shipping or transportation costs to and from the store, as well as the additional greenhouse gas emissions resulting from these activities. Normally, it takes an average of more than 1,500 miles for conventional fruits and vegetables to travel from farm to fork. And with a rooftop garden? Only two minutes walk up and down for the food, and you have contributed to a nearly 1,700 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from transporting food.
Urban Gardening Improves Air and Water Quality
Urban gardens act as nature’s filters, diligently removing pollutants from the air and rainwater, thereby enhancing the overall ecological balance. As industrial and vehicular emissions increasingly plague cities with harmful substances, plants take on the responsibility of absorbing these pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. In doing so, they provide much-needed respite by releasing fresh, oxygen-rich air, which can have a positive impact on public health.
Furthermore, the filtering action of plants extends to rainwater, which is essential for maintaining water quality in urban areas. Through a process known as phytoremediation, certain plant species can extract contaminants from rainwater, preventing these pollutants from reaching local water bodies and preserving the health of aquatic ecosystems.
Urban Gardening and Health Benefits
As mentioned above, urban gardens offer a healthy source of healthy, organic foods. In other words, you have complete control over the safety and nutrients you get from your home-grown products.
However, it doesn’t stop there. There is also a thing called “horticulture therapy,” which refers to how we reduce stress and induce relaxation through the plant-human relationships. A greener neighborhood – studies have shown – can help promote happiness, reducing anxiety and depression, and gardening habits can also make us feel more satisfied and at peace.
Build Your Own Garden Now
Living in an urban setting doesn’t mean you have to live in isolation from the natural world. For gardening enthusiasts or those looking for a greener lifestyle amidst bricks and concrete, urban gardening is the way to go. Integrating urban gardens into your landscape can yield significant benefits not only for your life, but all so for wildlife habitats and the overall well-being of the planet. So, consider all the types of urban garden above and start your own now, because it’s worth it.
