page_title: Sustainable living
section_title: Urban gardening
hierarchical_section_title: Sustainable living / Food / Urban gardening
caption_attribution_description: English: A roadside park, with some vegetables between the trees, near QIxia Ave in Ganjiaxiang section of Qixia District, Nanjing
context_page_description: Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources, and one's personal resources. It is often called as "earth harmony living" or "net zero living". Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint by altering their methods of transportation, energy consumption, and/or diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology. The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development.
  Lester R. Brown, a prominent environmentalist and founder of the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute, describes sustainable living in the twenty-first century as "shifting to a renewable energy-based, reuse/recycle economy with a diversified transport system." Derrick Jensen, a celebrated American author, radical environmentalist and prominent critic of mainstream environmentalism argues that "industrial civilization is not and can never be sustainable".
context_section_description: In addition to local, small-scale farms, there has been a recent emergence in urban agriculture expanding from community gardens to private home gardens. With this trend, both farmers and ordinary people are becoming involved in food production. A network of urban farming systems helps to further ensure regional food security and encourages self-sufficiency and cooperative interdependence within communities. With every bite of food raised from urban gardens, negative environmental impacts are reduced in numerous ways. For instance, vegetables and fruits raised within small-scale gardens and farms are not grown with tremendous applications of nitrogen fertilizer required for industrial agricultural operations. The nitrogen fertilizers cause toxic chemical leaching and runoff that enters our water tables. Nitrogen fertilizer also produces nitrous oxide, a more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Local, community-grown food also requires no imported, long-distance transport which further depletes our fossil fuel reserves. In developing more efficiency per land acre, urban gardens can be started in a wide variety of areas: in vacant lots, public parks, private yards, church and school yards, on roof tops (roof-top gardens), and many other places.  Communities can work together in changing zoning limitations in order for public and private gardens to be permissible. Aesthetically pleasing edible landscaping plants can also be incorporated into city landscaping such as blueberry bushes, grapevines trained on an arbor, pecan trees, etc. With as small a scale as home or community farming, sustainable and organic farming methods can easily be utilized. Such sustainable, organic farming techniques include: composting, biological pest control, crop rotation, mulching, drip irrigation, nutrient cycling and permaculture. For more information on sustainable farming systems, see sustainable agriculture.
caption: "Edible landscaping": a vegetable garden incorporated by the local residents into a roadside park. Qixia District, Nanjing, China
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