Gardener: Gardeners can help create a greener world

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As a lifelong passionate gardener and one who has always appreciated and respected nature, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of protecting and preserving it, too. That is, until I became more aware of the things I could be doing better to lighten my footprint in my own little corner of the world.
Recently I was invited to submit a guest blog post on Garden Rant on why I wrote "The Green Gardener's Guide." My first submission was politely rejected as not "ranty" enough. Thankfully, co-founding ranter Susan Harris suggested that I spend more time listing some of the reasons why I get so fired up about my mission to inform gardeners of a more eco-friendly way. Here's some of what I had to say.
I wrote "The Green Gardener's Guide" primarily for two reasons. First, I wanted to raise the environmental awareness of many well-intentioned yet uninformed gardeners and weekend warriors out there. Second, I wanted to offer real solutions. Although the title is rather succinct, it's the subtitle that strikes at the core of my purpose behind this book: Simple, significant actions to protect and preserve our planet. As a group, we're a pretty large force, at 90 million strong. Yet while we're creating so much beauty, we do a lot of not-so-pretty things.
For example:
Watering: We do it in the middle of the day or every day or off-target. No surprise that about half of all outdoor water use is wasted. We're facing a global water crisis, yet simple steps could save billions of gallons. In addition, those bad practices contribute to runoff and unhealthy plants, which often leads to more chemicals in the landscape.
Runoff: Water that isn't absorbed into the ground runs off into watersheds and storm-management systems, taking with it harmful contaminants, yards and impervious surfaces. The impact to habitats and ecosystems is staggering -- and avoidable when we learn how easy it is to keep much of that water from leaving our property.
Chemicals: Many homeowners go all out in trying to achieve weed- and pest-free lawns and gardens. Often, their modus operandi includes indiscriminate and liberal applications of chemicals, far in excess of manufacturer's suggestions. Contrary to popular belief, more is not better, and off-target treatments are never good.
Lifeless soil: Feed the soil and let the soil feed the plant. The environmental and horticultural benefits are far-reaching, from controlling erosion and runoff to the billions of subterranean microorganisms that nurture plants.
Wrong place: Putting a perfectly healthy plant in the wrong place is asking for trouble. For the unsuspecting gardener, this often means unsuccessful efforts to fix the problem chemically. The only sustainable solution is to plant it where it belongs in the first place.
Mow and blow: One gas-powered mower pollutes as much as 40 late-model cars on the road for the same amount of time. During the growing season, about 54 million lawns are cut each week in America. You don't need to do the math to know that's a lot of harmful emissions. Rechargeable, electric or good old-fashioned people power make for a much greener solution.
Horticultural waste: About 65 percent of what ends up in a landfill doesn't have to be there because it can be recycled or composted. Seeing bags of grass clippings and other yard debris on the curb makes me cringe. And can we please settle on a uniform way to recycle plastic pots or at least make it easier to find them a second home?
A favorite quote by Thomas Fuller in 1732 sums it up for me: "We never know the worth of water till the well is dry."
Today, we are consuming resources at unprecedented and unsustainable rates. With your help, I would like to enlighten the roughly 90 million of our gardening peers that collectively have the power to make a significant difference.

(Joe Lamp'l, host of "GardenSMART" on PBS, is a Master Gardener and author. For more information visit www.joegardener.com. For more stories, visit scrippsnews.com.)

THE GARDENER WITHIN