Survival Gardening

Well, it is basically how it sounds. A garden that will help you survive.

In these tough times, and it's not just the current global recession I'm talking about, many people have come to understand the concept of survival gardening.

People have gardens for lots of different reasons: most people have them because they love nature, love plants and flowers and simply enjoy the toil of working on one's own private piece of land.

Some have gardens purely for their curb-side appeal. These are usually the ones that are looking at possible re-sale value.

And then there are the survival gardeners! These are people that have realised what potential they have sitting right outside their back door.

It seems ridiculous to think that we have the opportunity to plant, tend and produce a multitude of wonderful, organic foods, but then we jump in the car (wasting gas), drive to the supermarket (wasting time), buy vegetables and fruit (from Chile or Asia or some other far-flung place) and then come home, wash them carefully (because of pesticides) and prepare them.

Now if you had a survival garden, none of this would be necessary. Well, not all the time anyway.

Now, obviously we all live in different climactic zones but this doesn't mean we can't grow something! Even the poorest soil, with the harshest of weather conditions will produce something if you put in the effort.

There are resources everywhere for this sort of thing. Your local nursery or garden-centre will happily provide you with lots of advice, strategies and tips to put you on the right path to creating your very own survival garden.

In the two World Wars that the last century has seen, without some form of survival gardening, many people would have been in trouble indeed!

Everything has its season, so it wouldn't be too hard to create a survival garden that would offer you some form of sustenance at least most of the year. And what a wonderful feeling to be able to tell your friends at your latest dinner party, that all the vegetables they've just eaten are all organic and grown under your own loving care. (Oh, and the lemon in their drinks too!)

There's a kind of healthy therapy to gardening too. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to put aside a couple of hours to hoe, weed or put some seeds in, and have the time to think your own private thoughts while tilling the soil of your little piece of paradise...