Those who are lucky enough to have access to a garden are in a great position to aid in the fight against climate change. One of the most important things that you can do is use the resources that your garden provides to reduce the amount that you buy. Reducing consumption allows every individual to withdraw their support for damaging systems, and forge a better path for the future.
Grow Your Own Food
Of course, one of the best ways to move towards a more sustainable way of life when you have even a small garden is to start growing at least some of your own food. Growing food can:
- Reduce your reliance on farming systems that are a major source of carbon emissions.
- Reduce your carbon footprint by reducing food miles.
- Allow you to grow organically, and prevent the use of chemicals that harm the environment.
- Reduce carbon emitted by travelling to the shops.
- Let you bring less plastic (in the form of food packaging) into your home.
Learn Skills for Sustainability
A garden also allows you to learn the skills you need to live in a more sustainable way. Not only can you learn how to care for plants and grow your own food. When you have a garden, you may also be able to learn how to:
- Cook and preserve the foods you have grown. (Which further reduces your reliance on packaged and processed foods from the shops.)
- Make herbal remedies and natural cures. (To reduce your reliance on big pharma.)
- Create cleaning and beauty products from the things that you grow. (So you do not have to buy as many products.)
- Make use of plant fibres to make paper, fabrics and other items. (And move even closer to a sustainable and self-reliant way of life.)
- Mix dyes and pigments for a range of applications from plant matter and other natural materials.
- Work with wood grown in your garden in a number of different ways. (To make or repair a range of useful products and, again, reduce overall consumption.)
- Produce at least some of your own fuel for a wood burning stove; make charcoal for barbecues, or for biochar to enrich the soil.
- Keep chickens, or perhaps even other livestock, to eliminate reliance on polluting factory farming systems.
Learning these skills are just some of the ways that you can use your garden and all its resources to reduce consumption. All these things can help you to become a part of the solution to the climate crisis, rather than part of the problem.