Urban Gardening

Definition of Urban Gardening

source: http://guzewskilandscapes.com/urban-gardens

What Is Urban Gardening?

Urban gardening is the process of growing plants of all types and varieties in an urban environment. Urban gardening, which is also known as urban horticulture or urban agriculture, encompasses several unique gardening concepts, including:

• Container gardening: Common for people with small patios, yards, or balconies. Container gardening makes use of a variety of containers – buckets, old tires, raised beds, windowboxes, kiddie  pools, barrels, shoes, and watering cans – for growing all manner of plants for food or beauty.
• Indoor gardening: When no patios, decks, yards, or balconies are available, indoor gardening can also be an effective urban gardening method. Plants can be grown in containers similar to those in container gardening, as well as in indoor greenhouses or solariums (sunrooms).
• Community gardening: This is a method of using outdoor public or private spaces to cultivate gardens for food or pleasure as a group and is a great choice for those with no yard or outdoor space.
• Guerilla gardening: A more subversive form of urban gardening, guerilla gardening is a way of adding plants to public spaces that don’t technically belong to the gardener such as a vacant lot, median, beside a highway, or in little strips of dirt.
• Greenroofs: Roofs designed with a growing medium for the purpose of cultivating plants are also a form of urban gardening and can be used to grow food, trees, and many other types of plants.

Urban gardening provides many environmental, social, and health benefits:

• Provides a local source of food
• Brings communities and families together
• Educates urban children about the origins of food
• Adds green spaces to cities
• Helps prevent soil erosion
• Mitigates stormwater runoff
• Helps filter air and rain water
• Mitigates the urban heat island effect
• Creates leisure and recreational spaces for humans