What is Urban Gardening?
It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a way to prep the next outbreak, you’re a warrior for the Earth, or you simply want to finally confirm whether or not you inherited your great aunt Alberta’s green thumb, there are plenty of reasons to create a big-city garden.
Urban gardening is a growing trend that is diverse, effective, and loaded with benefits. And yet, for many, it remains shrouded in mystery. Just what does “urban garden” even mean? Let’s unpack this loaded term and turn the concept of an inner-city garden from urban legend to bona fide reality.
Defining Urban Gardening
We always like to start with a direct, simplified answer before we get too far off into the weeds — especially when we’re talking about gardens. The term urban garden represents a lot of different things. However, most definitions tend to focus on a few major concepts. That said, we’re going to dub the official Homestead or Dead definition of urban gardening as the following:
An urban garden typically consists of farming, growing, or otherwise producing food in a town, city, or any other densely populated municipality.
Occasionally outer city areas and bustling suburbs can be lumped into the urban garden scene, but really, most of this kind of gardening tends to take place right in the heart of a metropolis.
It’s also important to point out that urban gardening can is also commonly referred to as urban farming or urban agriculture, all of which focus on that similar theme of producing food within a city.
What Urban gardening is not
It’s also worth quickly pointing out what urban gardening is not.
For instance, an urban gardening does not automatically equate to homesteading. It isn’t a community garden, either, nor is it necessarily subsistence gardening.
All of these can overlap with the purpose of an urban garden, but they don’t have to take place in order for an activity to be considered urban gardening. As far as most horticulturists are concerned, as long as you’re producing food in some fashion or another and you’re in a city, you’re urban gardening.
The Benefits of Urban Gardening
There are quite a few different ways that an urban garden can benefit you, your community, or both.
Eating Healthy
Probably the most obvious benefit of having your own garden is the simple fact that it provides you with access to fresh, homegrown food. This enables you to stay stocked with fruits and veggies that can be hand-picked moments before they’re tossed in a pot, popped in the oven, or rinsed and put right onto a dinner plate. Heck, how often do you get to have a salad with fresh greens that were harvested ten minutes earlier?
Saving money
Saving some cash is another way that urban gardening can benefit you. We emphasize the “can” because it’s very easy to invest significant amounts of money into a garden set up. Often the first year or two that you operate your garden can end up being more expensive than if you simply bought the cheapest options at the supermarket. However, if you strive to keep your expenses down, plant strategically, put in that sweat equity, and possibly even sell some of your homegrown goods, you certainly can use an urban garden to benefit a belabored bank account.
Preserving the Earth
Another area where urban gardening can have profound effects is on the environment. This one’s a twofer. First off, there’s the simple fact that by growing your own food, you’re avoiding all of those pesky food miles that can rack up as companies transport edibles thousands of miles from farms in places like Colombia or California all the way onto your dinner table. In addition, growing greenery and cultivating nature around your home can combat air pollution, aid with water runoff, and generally help to tame the concrete jungle.
Finding Food Justice
Along with saving the earth, an urban garden can help you avoid supporting unjust causes when it comes to food production. For instance, raising chickens is a legitimate way to go about setting up an urban farm, and it can give you the peace of mind that you haven’t enabled animal cruelty simply by buying a dozen eggs at the store.
Pure Satisfaction
Finally, there’s the simple fact that urban gardening can be incredibly rewarding. The DIY nature of growing your own inner-city garden and the sheer fact that you overcame the restrictions and defied the anti-green-thumb nature of city life can help you sleep better at night — literally. Along with that peace of mind, eating your healthy food, putting in all of that hard work, and breathing that fresh air can all help you sleep through the night with no issues. Trust us, it works better than any sleeping pill.
Different Kinds of Urban Gardens
While it’s easy to answer the question of what urban gardening is in a brief sentence, it doesn’t technically address the incredible variety of options that urban gardening offers. This is really a topic for an entire post on its own, but it’s worth quickly pointing out that there are quite a few different ways to go about urban gardening, including:
Rooftop gardening.
Indoor gardening.
Hydroponic and aquaponic gardening.
Aeroponic gardening.
Backyard gardening.
Container gardening.
Window and balcony gardening.
Tactical and square foot gardening.
Greenhouse gardening.
Green walls and vertical gardening.
Community gardening
Streetscaping or street landscaping.
Animal husbandry.
Beekeeping.
So, yeah, if you thought an “urban garden” was restricted to a two-foot by three-foot dirt patch in your backyard, think again.
How to Start Urban Gardening
If you’re thinking about starting your own urban garden, you’re going to want to go about the process thoughtfully.
For starters, remember that old real estate mantra: location, location, location. Unlike a farmer who can saunter out into his gazillion acres of land and pick the perfect spot for his new six-acre watermelon patch, as an urban farmer, you’re likely working with some fairly limited spaces.
Start the process by selecting the kind of urban garden you’re planning on growing first. You can do this by considering things like where your garden can get adequate sunlight, how much space is required for what you want to grow, accessibility to the space, how easy it will be to water and tend to your garden, and so on. Synthesize these considerations and then start to brainstorm some urban garden ideas.
As a word of warning, this part can be tricky, and it may require some creativity. For instance, if you can’t get permission from a landlord to plant a garden on the roof, consider asking your employer if you can start a company-approved garden space outside of your office.
The point is, if you want to succeed with an urban garden, you may have to get creative.
Spatial considerations aside, you’ll also want to tend to things like:
If you want to start your own seeds or you want to opt for seedlings at a local garden shop.
Your dirt’s pH level and how you can maintain good soil for your garden.
What grows well in your region and what doesn’t.
Local and regional zoning rules for agriculture and for things like selling produce.
Honestly, there’s too much to cover here, and we hope to have a post dedicated to “urban gardening 101” up soon. Just promise us that you’ll slow down and think things through before you get your plot up and running.
The Magic of Urban Gardening
Urban gardens are an amazing way to bring the power and majesty of nature right into the heart of the stone-cold city. The best part is the variety of different ways that you can go about investing in urban agriculture, enabling urban farmers to thrive regardless of their particular situation.
Whether you’re growing you’re own garlic by the windowsill, setting up a vertical or rooftop garden for your apartment complex, or getting permission to start a community garden in your local park, the opportunities and benefits that urban gardening offer are virtually endless.