Green America Offering New Gardening Resources and Free Webinars to Welcome Spring.
WASHINGTON, DC – March 11, 2024 – As spring approaches, Green America’s Climate Victory Gardens campaign is offering new tools and information to help beginner and advanced gardeners gear up. Climate Victory Gardens help fight climate change through regenerative agriculture techniques, an approach to gardening that fosters healthy soil that can draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Restored soil can capture 25-60 tons of atmospheric carbon per acre.
Nearly 25,000 gardens already have been tracked on Green America’s interactive map. For new climate victory gardeners, Green America is holding a series of free webinars featuring Perla Sofia Curbelo-Santiago, Ocean Robbins and the TransPlanter Rafaela Crevoshay, and Ashlie Thomas “The Mocha Gardener.”
Emma Kriss, Food Campaigns Manager at Green America, said: “Climate Victory Gardens offer a rewarding way to support endangered pollinators, heal the planet by sequestering atmospheric carbon, and grow food that’s more nutritious than typical store-bought produce. They’re also a great way to seed cross-generational relationships. As a variety of factors continue to reshape the housing market and the economics of cohabitation, fostering conversations about climate victory gardens on shared spaces opens opportunities for parents, children, landlords and tenants to work together for the good of people and the planet.”
Green America’s Climate Victory Garden resources cover 10 carbon-capturing practices:
- Grow Edible Plants - Grow food, not just grass and ornamentals. This decreases your grocery bills, encourages seasonal eating, and helps you and your family establish a closer relationship with your food.
- Keep Soils Covered - Protecting soils is the first step to improving their health. Physically covering exposed ground in your garden decreases water needs, curbs erosion, maintains topsoil, and protects soil microbes.
- Compost - Organic materials combined with healthy microbes create a strong fertilizer. This reduces waste going to methane-releasing landfills (greenhouse gas), increases your soil quality, and improves nutrition levels in the foods you grow.
- Encourage Biodiversity, Above and Below Ground - Diverse plants support diverse soil communities and make for beautiful gardens. Biodiversity helps your garden grow nutritious food, create habitat and balanced ecosystems, and keeps pests in check.
- Plant Perennials - These crops reduce soil disturbance and save you time, because they do not need to be replanted each year. Perennials protect your garden from the elements, control weeds, and provide habitat.
- Ditch the Chemicals - Synthetic chemicals like herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers kill beneficial organisms in the soil. Gardening chemical-free reduces your input costs, ensures safety for you and your family, and decreases pollution—from factory production to run off.
- Integrate Crops and Animals - Plants and animals evolved to coexist. Having animals in your garden or yard—like chickens, goats, or pigs—helps decrease pests and allows for natural fertilization. You may even get some eggs or milk out of the deal! If you can’t have animals, consider adding manure to your compost. Encourage pollinators and birds to enjoy your garden.
- Use People Power, Not Mechanization - Ditch the machines and use your hands! It’s hard work, but this helps reduce your dependency on fuel, decreases emissions, and lessens your costs. It eliminates the possibility of your soil being contaminated by spilled oil. And, you can build human relationships by asking for help from others.
- Rotate Plants and Crops - It’s important to move crops around in your garden and plant new varieties each season. This confuses pests, ensures soil nutrients stay balanced, and reduces your need for chemical inputs.
- Get to Know Your Garden - This goes beyond simply familiarizing yourself. Studying your garden helps you identify planting zones and determine how water, inputs, and other management can be applied most efficiently.
“As we learn more about the dangers of pesticides present on many fruits and vegetables we purchase at the grocery store, planting a Climate Victory Garden gives consumers a way to grow food they know is safe,” said Todd Larsen, Executive Co-Director of Green America. “And foods grown regeneratively are shown to have higher nutritional value as well.”
Climate Victory Gardens were inspired by the “Victory Gardens” campaigns during WWI and WWII that produced 40% of the fresh produce consumed in the U.S. at the time, and they empower Americans to grow gardens with regenerative agriculture techniques to help address the climate crisis. To add your own Climate Victory Garden to the map, visit: https://greenam.org/garden.
ABOUT GREEN AMERICA
Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org
MEDIA CONTACT: Max Karlin for Green America, (703) 276-3255, or mkarlin@hastingsgroupmedia.com.
