Urban gardening has grown rapidly in popularity in the past few years. Even well-established garden societies, like the Royal Horticultural Society, now promote urban gardening and host an annual RHS Urban Show.
The gardens presented in this year’s RHS Urban Show didn’t just make the most out of small spaces — they were sustainable, too. With their marvelous upcycled pots and recycled old planters, designers like Jason Williams proved that you don’t have to forgo ornamental planting when gardening in an urban space.
Embracing sustainable practices can reduce your impact, too. Even simple changes, like installing a water harvesting system or planting hardier flowers, can reduce waste and help your garden thrive in warmer urban environments.
Productive Urban Gardening
Urban gardens can brighten up street corners and turn boring blocks into havens for wildlife and humans alike. However, if you’re interested in gardening for sustainable purposes, you may want to consider planting productive crops that grow well in small spaces, like:
- Spring onion;
- Watercress;
- Runner beans;
- Tomatoes;
- Trained fruits.
These plants can make use of vertical space and leave room for companion flowers like marigolds and lavender. Switching some of your vegetable intake to garden-grown produce can help you decrease the impact of our increasingly globalized food supply. Pivoting away from the globalized food supply chain can:
- Mitigate the harm caused by food deserts;
- Reduce the risk of foodborne illness;
- Pivot away from supporting intensive production practices that harm local populations.
Urban gardening can feed people who live in food deserts and make a meaningful impact on the health and wellness of the people who live around your urban garden. You don’t need a big space to support a productive plot, either. Nowadays, you can even compost in an apartment.
Low-Waste Urban Design
The efforts of high-profile gardeners like Ron Finley have spurred on urban gardening in recent years. People like Finley have taken to the streets to transform street corners and muddy medians into flower beds and fertile vegetable patches. These designs are innately sustainable, as they provide shelter for small mammals, flowers for pollinators, and suck up carbon from the surrounding traffic.
You don’t necessarily have to take to your city streets and engage in guerilla gardening to bring your urban space to life. Instead, if you live in the city, consider utilizing sustainable backyard design ideas that have a big impact on your outdoor space, including:
- Utilizing organic, sustainably materials for footpaths and flower beds;
- Rainwater harvesting systems that minimize the strain you place on the water network;
- Installing solar-powered garden lighting to cut down your energy use;
- Vertical planting to make the most of your smaller space.
These modifications can help you build a sustainable garden that will thrive in an urban space. If you do decide to plant fruits and veggies, utilize sustainable gardening strategies to protect your crops. Companion planting and crafting homemade pesticides is a great way to keep your costs low, too.
Sustainable Gardening Practices
If you care about the wider environment, you should design your urban garden with wildlife in mind. Rather than killing all insects and mammals that venture into your space, make room for the bees, bugs, and bats that want to make a home in your garden. You can do this by:
- Creating a “bug hotel” from old wood and wine corks;
- Providing water in the form of bird baths or empty pots;
- Planting peppermint, eucalyptus, and catnip to keep pests like rats away from your yard naturally;
- Grow butterfly-friendly plants like honeysuckle and daisies.
Following these tips will create a wildlife-friendly garden and ensure your urban yard supports the wider ecosystem. Just be sure to contact pest control if you get unwanted critters like rats in your garden, as they carry more than their fair share of diseases.
Conclusion
Adopting a sustainable approach to urban gardening can help you thrive in a small space. Simple changes — like building bug hotels or installing a rainwater collection bin — will also support your efforts to lead a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Just be sure to adopt natural pest-repellent practices, as you don’t want slugs and mice to eat all your produce before you can harvest it.
Top image source Unsplash
