Organic gardening

Gardeners have such claims to being 'green people' that they have been undeservedly left out of the sustainability debate. We must hope this will end. Organic gardening can contribute much to sustainability objectives by:

• recycling all garden and household vegetable waste
• collecting, using and re-cycling all the water which falls on the garden
• growing their own organic fruit and vegetables
• generating solar and wind power within the garden
• avoiding the use of pesticides
• avoiding the use of chemicals
• reducing the area of grass cut by machine-powered equipment
• use an organic compost heap instead of a bonfire

Sustainability is a relative concept. It makes little sense to say that one garden design is 'sustainable' and another garden design is 'not sustainable'. But it does make sense to say that one garden design is 'more sustainable' and another garden design is 'less sustainable'. The distinction is that:

• more sustainable gardens have fewer inputs (water, fertiliser, chemicals) and fewer outputs (water, pollution, vegetable waste)
• less sustainable gardens have more inputs and more outputs

Gardeners can thus make far more sense of the sustainability concept than verbose politicians.