Thousands of people worldwide are gardening to grow food and curb climate change as part of nonprofit Green America’s Climate Victory Gardens campaign.

For centuries, gardeners across the globe have used climate-friendly methods to feed themselves. Launched in 2018, the Climate Victory Gardens campaign connects participants continuing these traditions in 36 countries.

It encompasses about 8,200 gardens in homes, schools, parks, community centers, businesses, and prisons. The gardens range from tiny balcony spaces to large rural plots, but together, they span over 1,700 acres and draw down more than 4,300 tons of carbon annually—equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from driving 36 million miles.

“We wanted to empower individuals to take action,” Green America’s food campaigns director Jes Walton tells Food Tank. “We knew gardening would give folks a tangible connection with the natural world and a piece of the climate solution.”

Climate Victory Gardens aims to involve the public in small-scale regenerative agriculture, she says, which includes techniques like protecting soils by planting cover crops. This mode of food production removes planet-warming carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in the soil and plants via photosynthesis, supporting a diverse complex of soil organisms and healthy crops.

Climate victory gardening also reduces emissions by avoiding costly pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers, she says, since making and distributing them takes a huge amount of energy. Instead of buying polluting fertilizer, climate victory gardeners enhance soils with homemade compost.

Read the full article about Climate Victory Gardens by Julia John at Food Tank.