How Can I Reduce My Carbon Footprint By Gardening?

Are you using energy-efficient products in your garden?

Have you reduced the use of gasoline-powered yard tools?

Have you planted mostly native plants in your garden?

Have you reduced water consumption and implemented water conservation technics in your garden?

Do you compost kitchen and garden waste?

Do you grow your plants from seed?

Do you have trees planted in your garden?

Using energy-efficient products and reducing your household’s energy consumption will reduce your contribution to carbon pollution. In your backyard alone, you can replace outdoor light bulbs with high-efficiency LED bulbs, install outdoor automatic light timers, or purchase solar-powered garden products.

Avoid using gasoline-powered tools such as lawnmowers and leaf blowers as much as you can. Instead, use human-powered tools such as push mowers, hand clippers, and rakes or reduce the amount of lawn area that needs maintenance. Using a gasoline-powered mower for an hour pollutes 10 to 12 times more than the average car.

Removing invasive plants from your garden and choosing an array of native alternatives can minimize the threat of invasive species expansion. Native plants help to maintain important pollinator connections and ensure food sources for wildlife; nonnative plants can outcompete these important native species for habitat and food. Contact your local or state native plant society to find out what plants are native to your area.

There are several ways to reduce water consumption in your garden, which is particularly important during increased heat waves and droughts. These include mulching, installing rain barrels, adjusting your watering schedule, and using drip irrigation. Practices like mulching also provide nutrients to the soil, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers which take significant amounts of energy to produce.

Composting kitchen and garden waste can significantly reduce your contribution to carbon pollution, especially methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. It also provides an excellent source of nutrients for your garden, again reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.

Pot-grown plants are usually grown in large nurseries, where they’re exposed to artificial lighting and heat, and then transported in lorries to individual garden centers across the country. By contrast, by growing plants from seed, you reduce enormous transport costs, can sow them at the right time of year (therefore reducing the need for artificial heat and light), and use peat-free compost. To further reduce your carbon footprint, buy seed from local seed swaps and gardening groups, or save your own.

Avoid digging. By digging we expose soil to the air and release CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Improve soil and suppress weeds instead by using mulches, weeding by hand, and growing green manures. Look after your garden equipment: wipe down and oil garden tools, wash and carefully store existing plastic pots, propagators, and cloches, and buy secondhand items where possible.

Trees can absorb and store as much as a ton of carbon pollution (CO2) from the atmosphere. If every one of America’s 85 million gardening households planted just one young shade tree in their backyard or community, those trees would absorb more than 2 million tons of CO2 each year. Shade trees planted near your home can also reduce the energy used for cooling in the summer.