The role of gardening in ensuring UK food security: Research briefing on gardening for food security

This background information attempts to gather facts, ideas and knowledge gaps for objective 1 " Review facts and figures related to the role and potential of home food production in the UK " of the Garden Organic (GO) and London City University workshop " Gardening for Food Security " held 26th November 2008. It draws on information from a Mori poll on gardening, calculations for UK food self sufficiency by various authors and Garden Organic's own research like members experiments on best practice gardening and footprint of gardens and allotments. Results are that it can be concluded that gardens, and 82% of all UK households have one, are an underused resource. There are plenty of ideas and concepts to use the garden space more productive for food or fuel production, without compromising on their amenity, recreation and biodiversity value. Among the first points of action is knowledge dissemination to grow vegetables on any space (small to large). Others are giving advice to gardeners who want to save serious money with gardening (what to grow, what to avoid, how to get a decent return on the time invested). Other functions of the garden as the use for biodiversity, composting or energy saving are also important. More information is required to educate and advise people on the possibilities and how to reduce the combined garden and household carbon footprint. The land availability analysis presented shows that gardens could (if needed) play a significant role in food security and therefore any effort to improve the “multiple resource potential” of gardens is not a waste of time and effort.