Urban agricultural movement: Build a garden in the city instead of maintaining a lawn
In many communities across the nation, a shift is underway from traditional lawn care to growing vegetable and urban gardens. This change offers multiple significant benefits, impacting communities in profound ways.
Enhanced Food Security and Access
Urban and community gardens enable people to grow fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs locally, reducing dependence on external food sources and grocery costs. These gardens help combat urban food deserts by making nutritious food more accessible within city neighborhoods.
Strengthened Social Cohesion and Community Building
Community gardens serve as collaborative spaces where diverse people come together, foster shared responsibility, build friendships, and develop social resilience. Working together on garden projects strengthens neighborhood connections and communal ties.
Environmental and Health Improvements
Gardens increase green space, improve air quality, and reduce urban heat island effects, making cities cooler and healthier places to live. They enhance biodiversity by supporting pollinators and other urban wildlife, promote soil health through composting, and contribute to carbon sequestration and climate resilience.
Economic Benefits
Locally grown produce lowers food transportation emissions and costs, while urban gardening can create small business opportunities and local jobs related to farming and garden management.
Mental and Physical Well-being
Gardening activities reduce stress, encourage physical activity, and improve mental health by providing purposeful outdoor engagement and connection to nature.
Sustainable Urban Ecosystems
Shifting from resource-intensive lawn care to productive gardens makes more efficient use of limited space in urban environments through rooftop, balcony, and vertical gardening methods, fostering more sustainable urban food systems that complement rural agriculture.
The great honeybee die-out is likely linked to pesticide use in lawns. The total area of lawns in the United States is 40.5 million acres, with approximately 3 million tons of fertilizers and over 30 thousand tons of synthetic pesticides used on lawns each year. Algae blooms that suffocate freshwater life are proven to be caused by lawn fertilizer run-off, and more than 7 billion gallons of water are used daily in the U.S. for residential irrigation.
Redirecting resources towards growing vegetable gardens, native plants, and urban gardens could potentially help build communities by encouraging interaction and sharing of produce. People could combat food waste by handling fruits, vegetables, and other foods better than restaurants and food chains currently do. Urban gardens could potentially be a good use of space currently used for lawns.
The total amount of money spent on lawn care in the U.S. annually is $30 billion. Between 30% and 60% of residential water usage in the U.S. is for outdoor purposes. Nationwide, landscape irrigation accounts for nearly one-third of all residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day.
By reallocating resources from lawns to vegetable and urban gardens, we can promote healthier, more resilient, connected, and sustainable communities. This approach addresses environmental, social, and economic challenges simultaneously, fostering a greener, more liveable future for all.
- As communities strive to reduce the environmental impact of traditional lawn care, a natural expansion includes the incorporation of home-and-garden spaces dedicated to sustainable-living practices, such as gardening and the cultivation of vegetables and native plants, which can serve dual purposes: fostering healthier food choices and ecological balance through urban gardening.
- In line with recent efforts to create more sustainable lifestyles and urban ecosystems, homeowners might consider repurposing their lawns for productive gardens to lower the excessive spending on lawn care, cut water usage, and contribute to a collective goal of building connected, greener communities that promote both environmental and economic benefits, while prioritizing the overall well-being of our society.
