Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time. It may seem hopeless, but there are things that home gardeners can do to make a difference while also ensuring food security at the same time.
You may have already planted a COVID Victory Garden, or have started to grow your own food to become more self-sufficient as food shortages and grocery price increases have become the norm.
There’s even better news about your garden, though. With regenerative practices, you can essentially place a protective barrier over your garden to protect it from the extreme weather that climate change brings.
What’s more is that regenerative gardening practices can sequester carbon at the same time.
So while you’re focusing on productivity and climate resilience in your garden, it will be reversing the effects of climate change at the same time.
You don't need a huge farm to apply the techniques of regenerative agriculture. Anyone with a garden can use these smart ways to help fight climate change and become more self-sufficient at the same time.
We'll show you how to use regenerative gardening to make your own backyard a strong, climate-tough garden.
You’ll learn:
All of these techniques add up to a more climate-resilient garden, and ensure that you have food security while also tending to the environment at the same time.
Let’s dive into the regenerative methods that can fortify your garden and harness its potential to help heal our planet
This core principle of soil health comes from regenerative agriculture. Other key practices include:
All of these features of regenerative agriculture add up to build fertile and healthy soil.
This is in contrast to conventional farming. “Standard” agriculture relies on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to ensure a harvest.
While organic and regenerative farms use fertilizers and pesticides, they are organic in nature and less harmful for the environment.
When compared to conventional growing, regenerative farms have less soil erosion, better water retention, and more beneficial insects and wildlife. Conventional practices might give quick results, but regenerative methods aim for long-term sustainability.
How does that translate to the humble backyard garden?
For home gardens, regenerative agriculture can mean fewer losses during bad weather and more robust plants.
A garden rich in organic matter and microbial life holds more carbon, fights off diseases better, and uses water more efficiently.
This not cuts down on the need for artificial inputs and supports a balanced ecosystem that can withstand an unpredictable climate.
Through regenerative gardening, home gardeners can play a pivotal role in a more resilient and productive future.
Implement the following regenerative practices to transform your garden into a resilient landscape that doubles as a carbon sink.
The addition of mulch between established plants is an essential protective layers of a regenerative garden that increases climate resilience. One of the key components to this practice is to always have some mulch on hand to add to your garden.
Here’s how you can collect mulch material year-round:
A recent research paper from 2023 notes the importance of mulch in sustainable gardening systems. They highlight that mulch is so important because it holds in water during times of drought, and prevents soil erosion during heavy rains. Mulch keeps the soil warm during unexpected cold weather, and can keep soil cool under its layers during heat waves.
Additionally, the paper goes on to say that protective mulch is a food source for beneficial soil microbes, and keeps them hydrated and protected at the same time. As the mulch breaks down, it improves soil structure, which in turn helps your plants to grow better.
It almost seems as though there’s nothing mulch can’t do!
Take Action: Connect with local farmers or tree surgeons to ask for details about mulch pick-up or delivery.
Regenerative agriculture prioritizes perennials whenever possible. We can take this priority into our own home gardens, too.
Like regenerative agriculture itself, perennials fulfil two important tasks. First, they sequester more carbon over a longer period of time when compared with annuals (Global Change Biology). Second, once perennials are established, they become naturally more resilient and hardy to extreme weather conditions (EESI).
Integrate perennials, such as berry bushes, asparagus, perennial kale, fruit and nut trees into your garden if you have the space. These crops can give you harvests for many years and will stand the test of time throughout weather extremes.
Take Action: Share cuttings with neighbors to cultivate community resilience as well as your garden’s.
Many regenerative agriculture certifications require that farmers make their own compost on site. A compost bin (or two) can also be a cornerstone of regenerative gardening. A compost benefits the garden, in that it transforms household and yard waste into a nutrient-rich soil amendment.
Additionally, when these items get composted, they are diverting waste from landfills and therefore reduce methane and carbon emissions from landfills. In fact, a paper from Environmental Health Insights notes that if all food waste in the US was composted instead of sent to landfills, we could reduce 128 million tons of CO2e emissions yearly!
Compost builds healthy soil too. It contains loads of microbial life, which will integrate into your native soil and improve it over time. This enhanced population of microbes helps plants to thrive in challenging conditions, too. As NC State University highlights, The beneficial relationships between plants and mycorrhizal fungi, for example, help deliver water and nutrients to the plants as extensions of its roots. In this way, they help the plant to access a quality of life that they wouldn’t be able to source on their own.
To get started, select a spot in your yard for a compost pile or bin Add a mix of green (nitrogen-rich) and brown (carbon-rich) materials and turn the pile regularly to aid decomposition. In time, you'll have a supply of homemade compost to enrich your garden beds.
Take Action: Get a kitchen countertop compost bin to make collecting scraps easy and to encourage a daily composting habit.
Many farmers (and gardeners too!) are stuck in a cycle of tilling their soil every year in order to “start the season fresh” and prepare the soil for spring crops.
Unfortunately, the practice of tillage has lead to environmental disasters such as the Dust Bowl. It also releases the carbon that the soil microbes and plants have worked hard to sequester in the depths of the soil.
So, like many of the practices I’ve outlined here, no-till gardens prevent further greenhouse gas emissions.
And, no-till gardens are actually more resilient to weather extremes. The natural structure of the soil that is preserved with no-till methods helps the soil to absorb more water and allows for easy root growth. In this way, the garden becomes more hardy against both drought and heavy rainfall, since the water can both filter through and be held in the soil (USDA).
Take Action: Use abroadfork instead of a tiller to aerate soil without disrupting its structure.
Regenerative and Permaculture-inclined seed producers are currently doing a lot of work to select for climate change resilience in the seeds that they produce.
You can also save your own seeds for more self-sufficiency and better adapted varieties.
For example, the Dry Farming Institute funds the development of drought-hardy vegetables. One of my favorite outcomes of this program is the Dark Star Zucchini, which proved to create abundant yields with very little water when compared to standard varieties in my own garden.
Look for seed producers that do similar work, and that do not pamper their seeds too much. This builds more resilience into the crops that these seeds will grow into.
Some examples of seed producers that create climate change resilient seed stock are Adaptive Seeds, High Desert Seeds, North Circle Seeds, and Experimental Farm Network.
Take Action: Create a seed exchange with local gardeners to diversify your garden's genetic palette.
Landrace seeds are a mix of different crop varieties that combine to create strong plants. This is a huge benefit, because they make plants that can handle extreme weather conditions with ease.
Because these seeds have a wide mix of traits, they're more likely to grow well even if the weather changes a lot from year to year.
For example, if you usually have dry weather but then one year it rains a lot, your landrace seeds are still likely to produce a harvest. In contrast, if you keep growing the same line of seeds for many years, they might not do as well because they essentially become inbred.
Joseph Lofthouse, a popular advocate for landrace gardening, writes about this traditional practice in Mother Earth News. He explains that basically, landrace seeds don't have the problem of getting weaker over time like some seeds because they are so varied. This genetic diversity means they have a natural strength that keeps going season after season.
Landrace seed growing is a way for anyone, whether you have a small garden or a big farm, to make plants that are tough and can survive different kinds of weather all over the world.
Take Action: Document your seed-saving process in a garden journal or blog to track what works best for your climate.
When you embrace regenerative gardening, you join a global initiative to tackle climate change in your own backyard.
By integrating these regenerative practices, your garden becomes more than just a source of sustenance—it becomes a living, breathing testament to your commitment to the planet. Step by step, plant by plant, we can each make a difference in our corner of the world. Start today, and watch your garden—and hope—grow.
This transformative method means you can grow a garden resilient enough to endure extreme weather and contribute to environmental restoration at the same time.
Implement no-till practices, plant perennials, and create compost to partner with nature and co-create a sustainable ecosystem. Your dedication to soil enrichment, genetic diversity, and selection of climate-adapted varieties will form a solid base for robust plants and a healthier earth.
Every step you take sows seeds of hope and strength for the future, and highlight the significant role even a small garden can play in the broader environmental picture.
