Sustainable gardening

Sustainable gardening includes the more specific sustainable landscapes, sustainable landscape design, sustainable landscaping, sustainable landscape architecture, resulting in sustainable sites. It comprises a disparate group of horticultural interests that can share the aims and objectives associated with the international post-1980s sustainable development and sustainability programs developed to address the fact that humans are now using natural biophysical resources faster than they can be replenished by nature.

Included within this compass are those home gardeners, and members of the landscape and nursery industries, and municipal authorities, that integrate environmental, social, and economic factors to create a more sustainable future.

Organic gardening and the use of native plants are integral to sustainable gardening.

After the establishment of sustainable agriculture in the early 1980s it was some time before the emergence of Sustainable Horticulture (as sustainable production horticulture) at the International Society of Horticultural Science's First International Symposium on Sustainability in Horticulture held at the International Horticultural Congress in Toronto in 2002. This symposium produced "conclusions ... on Sustainability in Horticulture and a Declaration for the 21st Century". The principles and objectives outlined at this conference were discussed in more practical terms at the following conference at Seoul in 2006.

Many of the eco-friendly principles and ideas espoused by sustainable gardens, landscapes and sites perpetuate sustainable practices established as a reaction to resource-intensive industrial agriculture. These practices were established as movements for self-sufficiency and small-scale farming based on a holistic systems approach and ecological principles. Included here would be: biodynamic agriculture, no-till farming, agroecology, Fukuoka farming, forest gardening, organic gardening and others. On a larger scale there is the more recent "whole farm planning" which was established in 1995, and ecoagriculture established in 2000, and other variants of sustainable agricultural systems. Perhaps the most influential of these approaches is permaculture, established by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren as both a design system and a loosely defined philosophy or lifestyle ethic. Permaculture shares many principles and practices of the above but not the broad philosophical base as indicated by the title of the 2002 publication Permaculture, principles and pathways beyond sustainability. The application of sustainability principles to the horticultural sphere has now becoming broadly accepted in commerce and academia.

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