Edible landscaping is a trend that’s gained traction over the past decade with many home gardeners. Its popularity can be attributed to spiralling produce prices and shrinking property sizes. Gardeners are opting to make use of their limited space by selecting plants that achieve edible produce rather than purely gain an ornamental reward.
Why Has Edible Landscaping Become Too Greedy?
According to Christopher Weber’s article In a hungry world, should edible landscaping do more? we’ve become self-sufficient to the point that “self” is the only one gratified by this practise.
With the dearth of food available to our hungriest citizens and the glut that we produce for ourselves, surely we can find a way to solve one of the world’s worst social problems. From a home gardener viewpoint there’s heaps we can do to solve some of these issues but are we prepared to make the sacrifice – if it is a sacrifice at all?
Ideas For Your Edible Landscaping Produce
- Donate the surplus crops to your local food bank or homeless shelter. Most of our edible plants crop bountifully all at once meaning that the fruit is often wasted.
- Create a Street-Side Veggie Patch where others can pick fresh produce as, and when, they need. This is the freshest way to offer a sustainable solution but may create other problems with unwanted visitors and vandals.
- Petition your local government and businesses to use their gardens as edible landscaping opportunities rather than pour countless finances into tending ornamental shrines.
- Participate in the Plant a Row for the Hungry program and opt for staples such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips and swedes.
- In the same vein, why not plant a fruit tree primarily for the hungry. Even a dwarf variety will offer some produce for those in need.
- Join, or start, a community garden with the aim to produce fruit and vegetables for the poor and needy. Most local governments would be only to happy to give land for this purpose.
Such an insurmountable problem such as world hunger can now easily be challenged by the simplest of means – edible landscaping. It’s not rocket science just a shift in our thinking that could harness our expertise and make the world a better place for those who need help.
If you’ve been involved with gardening to solve hunger in your area let us know what you did and your experiences. It may give all us gardeners to shove along we need.