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Sustainable Gardening

4.3 Sustainable Gardening

The featured garden will draw attention to the Sustainability Hub because of its benefits for both people and nature. Sustainable gardening encourages greater biodiversity by creating habitats for pollinators and beneficial insects, allowing respectful coexistence with native wildlife. Sustainable farming methods affect the environment in a positive way and contribute to the well-being and quality of people's lives by providing cleaner air, healthier produce free of pesticides because of healthier soil, and have been proven to have a therapeutic effect. Horticultural activities improve the social, educational, psychological, and physical adjustment of persons to improve their body, mind, and spirit (SaferBrand, n.d.). Additionally, a study found gardening regularly, caused a decreased risk for dementia by 36-47% (Simons et al., 2016). Gardening counts as a moderate-intensity exercise, which reduces heart attack odds by 30% for people over 60 years old (Min Zhao et al., 2019). It is evident why sustainable farming/gardening plays a crucial role in every aspect of the pursuit of sustainability in everyone’s everyday lives. The Sustainability Hub needs a garden to match its green approach and help present itself as a place where protecting nature and promoting biodiversity matter. In addition, the presence of a garden in the Hub assists in attracting people, having an outdoor space where activities can be held, and benefiting the community that engages themselves with it. There are a lot of different fields of sustainable farming/gardening. Those that can be implemented best, but not limited to, on the Sustainability Hub’s specific setting are permaculture, agrivoltaics, agroforestry, and organic farming.

4.3.1 Permaculture

Permaculture is a system that mimics how vegetables and plants grow in natural ecosystems. Its purpose is to apply smart farming and design to reduce waste of resources and increase production efficiency. Two of the various techniques in permaculture include herb and plant spirals, and hügelkultur beds, as it was listed earlier. (Hortidaily, 2019) Herb spirals are a circular bed with spiraled walls that creates an extreme collection of microclimates, with varying degrees of sun exposure, drainage, and the opportunity to separate bad companions and neighbor friendly plants. It, also, fosters biodiversity and provides habitat for pollinators and other beneficial wildlife, such as birds, bats, and bees. (Engels, 2014) Whereas hügelkultur beds try, once again, to mimic the growth of plants in a forest by burying beneath the soil logs and twigs, thus providing the plants with fertile soil and excellent water absorption and retention. (Greentumble, 2016)

4.3.2 Agrivoltaic

Secondly, agrivoltaic farming makes a very interesting practice considering the focus of stakeholders Solare Zukunft, being solar energy. Agrivoltaics is the practice of growing crops underneath solar panels. One of the most obvious advantages that is presented with this field is saving space by utilizing the same area of land to obtain both solar energy and agricultural products. This coexistence of solar panels with crops on the same surface, provides shade to the latter reducing temperatures and preventing evaporation, while also leading to the protection of the plants from all possible atmospheric phenomena. (IBERDROLA, n.d.) Another thing to note is that solar panels are inherently temperature sensitive: as they get hotter, their efficiency decreases. Growing certain species under the photovoltaic panels allows us to reduce the temperature of the panels keeping them efficient. (CESPA, 2022)

4.3.3 Agroforestry

As for agroforestry, the only issue is that its realization depends on the location of the “Sustainability Hub" being near a forest. However, if that is covered, the mixture of trees or shrubs into the land provide shade and shelter, like solar panels did in agrivoltaics, that protect plants, animals, and water resources. The system mimics natural forest ecosystems, and it's designed to make effective use of the available land. Compared to traditional farming systems, agroforestry can double crop yields and significantly decrease the need for chemical fertilizers or pesticides. (Hortidaily, 2019)

4.3.4 Organic Farming

Finally, there is organic farming. While it is self-explanatory, organic farming is in a way the parent of every forementioned field. It combines most of these practices plus some others like cover crops and perennials or reducing the use of tillage. In general, organic gardening differs from traditional gardening in the way that it rejects the use of all artificial agricultural chemicals, including pesticides used to control insects, diseases and weeds. This can be further assisted by releasing or providing habitat for populations of beneficial insects (such as ladybugs, lacewings, and fly parasites), as well as encouraging other organisms to thrive (such as birds and bats) that will serve as predators of crop-eating pest insects. (Greentumble, 2015) There is little doubt that organic gardening improves soils because of the emphasis on increasing soil organic matter, leading to improved soil tilth and structure, and improved water retention. It succeeds in these by making use of what was mentioned earlier; cover crops, which are planted during off-season times when soils might otherwise be left bare, and perennial crops, that keep soil covered and maintain living roots in the ground year-round. (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2022) In conclusion, since this project of “Sustainability Hub” aims to be a commune of multiple and different NGOs or Institutes sharing their knowledge and educating the people of Freiburg both theoretically and practically, a short list (for now) of possible collaborators that are based in Freiburg and may be interested in joining forces to teach sustainable gardening to all, is featured:

  • Baden-Württemberg Nature Conservation Fund Foundation (Naturschutzfonds Baden-Württemberg) aims to initiate and promote new, innovative ways in nature conservation and to support projects with a model character. (https://stiftung-naturschutz-bw.de/)
  • Okostation is the educational center for environmental awareness of the Southern Upper Rhine - Environmental Protection of BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany) regional association. Among others, it houses an external natural terrain with a pavilion, an organic garden with medicinal plants, and a vegetable garden. (https://www.oekostation.de/)
  • URGENCI is the international grassroot network of all forms of regional and Local Solidarity-based Partnerships for Agroecology (LSPAs), of which Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is the best-known iteration. Their main objective is to develop a transnational network of regional and local partnerships between producers and consumers. Education, broadly, is the founding activity of the network: sharing experiences and educational materials is a top priority to support local groups in improving their practices and building a solid pan-European and global community. (https://urgenci.net/)
  • Natur- & Tiererlebnishof Opfingen e.V. They focus on educating children about animals and nature. (https://www.natur-und-tiererlebnishof.de/)