How Having an Organic Garden Helps the Planet

There are many ways we are told we can help the planet and these normally involve things like using energy saving light bulbs, recycling and avoiding leaving things over night. All of this helps to reduce your ‘carbon footprint’ in that it limits the amount of energy expenditure you use and the amount of greenhouse gasses you indirectly produce. However none of these things are particularly proactive in that they all involve not doing things rather than focusing on doing something active to help the environment. If you have an organic garden on the other hand though, then you are not only reducing the damage you’re doing to the environment but you’re also doing something extra to give back to the planet. Here we’ll look at some of the different ways that having an organic garden can help to slow down global warming and more.

It’s good for the local wildlife:

If you’ve ever heard of the ‘circle of life’ then you’ll know that even the smallest creature can play a big role in the wider ecosystem if it provides food for other creatures or keeps various other plants and species in check by preying on them. If you think that bees are relatively unimportant animals then think about how important they are for spreading pollen and thus promoting plant life, whereas things like ladybirds are completely necessary for keeping aphids at bay and so helping plants to grow – every creature has its place.

If you have a garden then, you are providing food and shelter for any number of creatures and you might find you have hedgehogs coming to visit and squirrels, birds making nests and all manner of bugs living off of your plants. This is why it’s so important that your garden be organic as you will otherwise find that you kill off too many creatures in large numbers using synthetic pesticides. Instead you should be killing pests by encouraging their natural predators into your garden – it’s fine to have aphids so long as you have ladybirds too, and slugs are safe if you can bring hedgehogs in. By doing this you create a microcosmic ecosystem in your own back garden and you can marvel at how the ‘circle of life’ maintains your garden for you on a small scale. Meanwhile you will be helping all manner of species to survive and grow.

It’s good for the atmosphere:

It is said that if each person planted one new tree per year, that would be enough to completely negate their own carbon footprint. While this is likely fairly hyperbolic, planting trees and plants can certainly help to reduce greenhouse gasses and slow down global warming. The reason that trees help to reduce greenhouse gasses, is that one of the biggest contributors to global warming is carbon dioxide (hence the term ‘carbon footprint’) which is produced as a by-product of many human endeavors and unfortunately has the nasty tendency to retain heat from the sun; and trees – as we all know – convert carbon dioxide back into oxygen.

Now if you consider how many plants and trees you plant in your typical garden, that is now making a large difference to the climate overall for just a single household. And even though this might seem insignificant on a global scale, all new movements start at home – so if we all were to heed this advice then it would add up to a huge difference in the climate and help to undo some of the damage we’ve already caused.

It allows you to make your own supplies:

Another problem for our planet is that it’s supporting too many people and in many cases just doesn’t have the resources. Whenever we eat food that we’ve bought in shops we are causing more food to need to be harvested and transported. Not that long ago we very nearly faced the extinction of the humble banana, and the fact that most of these fruits and vegetables are coming such a long way means that more fuel is being used up to get them here.