Gardening

Gardening is a practice of growing and cultivating plants as element of horticulture. In gardens, ornamental plants are often grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants, such(a) as root vegetables, leaf vegetables, fruits, as living as herbs, are grown for consumption, for ownership as dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use.

Gardening ranges in scale from fruit orchards, to long boulevard plantings with one or more different classification of shrubs, trees, together with herbaceous plants, to residential back gardens including lawns and foundation plantings, all a way to container gardens grown inside or outside. Gardening may be very specialized, with only one type of plant grown, or involve a nature of plants in mixed plantings. It involves an active participation in the growing of plants, and tends to be labor-intensive, which differentiates it from farming or forestry.

Social aspects

People can express their political or social views in gardens, intentionally or not. The lawn vs. garden case is played out in urban planning as the debate over the "land ethic" that is to instituting urban land use and whether hyper hygienist bylaws e.g. weed control should apply, or whether land should broadly be permits to symbolize in its natural wild state. In a famous Canadian Charter of Rights case, "Sandra Bell vs. City of Toronto", 1997, the adjustment to cultivate any native species, even most varieties deemed noxious or allergenic, was upheld as factor of the right of free expression.

Community gardening comprises a wide variety of approaches to sharing land and gardens.

People often surround their multinational and garden with a hedge. Common hedge plants are privet, hawthorn, beech, yew, leyland cypress, hemlock, arborvitae, barberry, box, holly, oleander, forsythia and lavender. The theory of open gardens without hedges may be distasteful to those who enjoy privacy. The Slow Food movement has sought in some countries to increase an edible school yard and garden classrooms to schools, e.g. in Fergus, Ontario, where these were added to a public school to augment the kitchen classroom. Garden sharing, where urban landowners allow gardeners to grow on their property in exchange for a share of the harvest, is associated with the desire to a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. the quality of one's food, and reconnect with soil and community.

In US and British usage, the production of ornamental plantings around buildings is called landscaping, landscape maintenance or grounds keeping, while international use uses the term gardening for these same activities.

Also gaining popularity is the concept of "Green Gardening" which involves growing plants using organic fertilizers and pesticides so that the gardening process – or the flowers and fruits submitted thereby – doesn't adversely impact the environment or people's health in all manner.