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Gardening

"Indoor gardening" is concerned with the growing of household plants within the residence, in a conservatory or a greenhouse. The plants grown in a conservatory or greenhouse may or may not require more exacting care and conditions than ordinary household plants. Indoor gardens are sometimes incorporated as part of air conditioning or heating systems.

"Water gardening" is concerned with the growing of plants suitable for pools and ponds. Bog gardens are also considered a type of water garden. These require special conditions and considerations.

Gardening also takes place in non-residential green areas, such as parks, public or semi-public gardens such as botanical gardens or zoological gardens, amusement and theme parks, along transportation corridors and around tourist attractions.

Table of contents

1 Gardening vs. farming 2 Further definitions 3 Gardening as an art 4 Social aspect 5 History 6 Notable gardeners 7 See also

Gardening vs. farming

The key distinction between fruit and vegetable gardening and farming is essentially one of scale: gardening can be a hobby or an income supplement, but farming is generally understood as a full-time or commercial activity, usually involving more land and quite different practices. One distinction is that gardening is labor-intensive and employs very little infrastructural capital, typically no more than a few tools, e.g. a spade, hoe, basket and watering can. By contrast, larger-scale farming often involves irrigation systems, chemical fertilizers and harvesters or at least ladders, e.g. to reach up into fruit trees. However, this distinction is becoming blurred with the increasing use of power tools in even small gardens.

In part because of labor intensity and aesthetic motivations, gardening is very often much more productive per unit of land than farming. In the Soviet Union, half the food supply came from small peasants' garden plots on the huge government-run collective farms, although they were tiny patches of land. Some argue this as evidence of superiority of capitalism, since the peasants were generally able to sell their produce. Others consider it to be evidence of a tragedy of the commons, since the large collective plots were often neglected, or fertilizers or water redirected to the private gardens.

The term precision agriculture is sometimes used to describe such economically viable forms of gardening using intermediate technology (more than tools, less than harvesters), especially of organic varieties. Gardening is effectively scaled up to feed entire villages of over 100 people from specialized plots. A variant is the community garden which offers plots to urban dwellers; see further in allotment (gardening).

Further definitions

The living wall is an unusual variant of a living machine and is effectively a vertical garden: water dripping down feeds a surface growing with moss and vines, other plants, some insects and bacteria, and captured at the bottom in a pool or pond to be recirculated to the top. These are sometimes built indoors to help cure sick building syndrome or otherwise increase the oxygen levels in recirculated air.

Gardening as an art

See also: Landscape architecture

Social aspect

The lawn vs. garden issue is played out in urban planning as the debate over the "land ethic" that is to determine urban land use and whether hyperhygienist bylaws (e.g. weed control) should apply, or whether land should generally be allowed to exist in its natural wild state. In a famous Canadian Charter of Rights case, "Sandra Bell vs. City of Toronto", 1997, the right to cultivate all native species, even most varieties deemed noxious or allergenic, was upheld as part of the right of free expression, at least in Canada.

Gardening is thus not only an essential food source and art, but also - a right. The Slow Food movement has sought in some countries to add an edible schoolyard and garden classrooms to schools, e.g. in Fergus, Ontario, where these were added to a public school to augment the kitchen classroom.

In US and British usage, the care, installation, and maintenance of ornamental plantings in and around commercial and institutional buildings is called landscaping, landscape maintenance or groundskeeping, while international usage uses the term gardening for these same activities.

History

Notable gardeners

• Theophrastus
• Lucullus
• Tiberius
• Pliny
• John Tradescant
• Carolus Clusius
• Andre le Notre
• William Kent
• Lancelot "Capability" Brown
• A. J. Downing
• Frederick Law Olmstead
• Gertrude Jekyll
• Vita Sackville-West
• Russell Page
• Luis Barragan
• Humphrey Repton
• Percy Thrower
• Alan Titchmarsh
• Geoffrey Smith
• Ian Hamilton Finlay
• Derek Jarman
• William Shenstone
• Edith Wharton
• Geoffrey Bawa
• C. Z. Guest

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