page_title: Climate-friendly gardening
section_title: Protecting carbon stores in land beyond gardens
hierarchical_section_title: Climate-friendly gardening / Protecting and enhancing carbon stores / Protecting carbon stores in land beyond gardens
caption_attribution_description: English: Alliums, lavender, box and other water-thrifty plants in the dry garden at Cambridge Botanic Garden
context_page_description: Climate-friendly gardening is gardening in ways which reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from gardens and encourage the absorption of carbon dioxide by soils and plants in order to aid the reduction of global warming.
  To be a climate-friendly gardener means considering both what happens in a garden and the materials brought into it and the impact they have on land use and climate.
  It can also include garden features or activities in the garden that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.
context_section_description: Climate-friendly gardening includes actions which protect carbon stores beyond gardens. The biggest carbon stores in land are in soil; the two habitat types with the biggest carbon stores per hectare are woods and wetlands; and woods absorb more carbon dioxide per hectare per year than most other habitats. Climate-friendly gardeners therefore aim to ensure that nothing they do will harm these habitats.
  According to Morison and Morecroft (eds.)'s Plant Growth and Climate Change, the net primary productivity (the net amount of carbon absorbed each year) of various habitats  is:
  Tropical forests: 12.5 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year;
  Temperate forests: 7.7 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year;
  Temperate grasslands: 3.7 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year;
  Croplands: 3.1 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.
  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report Land use, land-use change, and forestry  lists the carbon contained in different global habitats as:
  Wetlands: 643 tonnes carbon per hectare in soil + 43 tonnes carbon per hectare in vegetation = total 686 tonnes carbon per hectare;
  Tropical forests: 123 tonnes carbon per hectare in soil + 120 tonnes carbon per hectare in vegetation = total 243 tonnes carbon per hectare;
  Temperate forests: 96 tonnes carbon per hectare in soil + 57 tonnes carbon per hectare in vegetation = total 153 tonnes carbon per hectare;
  Temperate grasslands: 164 tonnes carbon per hectare in soil + 7 tonnes carbon per hectare in vegetation = total 171 tonnes carbon per hectare;
  Croplands: 80 tonnes carbon per hectare in soil + 2 tonnes carbon per hectare in vegetation = total 82 tonnes carbon per hectare.
  The figures quoted above are global averages. More recent research in 2009 has found that the habitat with the world's highest known total carbon density - 1,867 tonnes of carbon per hectare - is temperate moist forest of Eucalyptus regnans in the Central Highlands of south-east Australia; and, in general, that temperate forests contain more carbon than either boreal forests or tropical forests.
caption: Alliums, lavender, box and other water-thrifty plants in the dry garden at Cambridge Botanic Garden
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