2008

Today is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is poverty. I signed up a few weeks ago, and I’m fairly sure that at some point I had a genius idea for this blog post, but I have since forgotten it.

The problem is that, like most people in the UK, I don’t know that much about poverty. There have been times in my life (some of them very recent), when I had no disposable income and wasn’t sure how I would continue to pay for the roof over my head – but I have always managed to do so. I love this post from The Rubbish Diet this morning, which talks about one of the organizations that deals with people here who are not so lucky.

I honestly believe that if we continue down our current path of conspicuous consumption, the future will be very hard for many more people across the globe. And so, in the hope of tackling future poverty, I’m coming back to more familiar ground – tackling environmental problems now.

Wherever you live, you can find room for an edible plant. Some people have gardens, some patios. Some only have window boxes and some just a sunny windowsill. I had edible plants on my desk at work for several years. Each time you grow something that you eat – whether it’s a year’s supply of potatoes, or just the basil for your pasta sauce – you prevent it being trucked in from miles away.

It doesn’t even need to cost you any money. Gardening friends will happily provide seeds/ cuttings/ plants/ pots and compost and take away your vegetable waste if you don’t have the space for a compost bin. You can grow plants from seeds and pips from supermarket fruit and vegetables. Or you can keep an eye out on Freecycle and kit yourself out that way.

There are lots of articles floating around on gardening to save money during the credit crunch, so you won’t be short of information either (or spend a while looking around here). As soon as you have your first harvest (which could be in a few days, if you’re sprouting seeds) you are contributing to your food security and our future survival.

If you want to help others directly, then consider donating to one of the following charities, who use gardening to alleviate all kinds of distress:

Garden Organic’s international programme promotes and facilitates organic and ecological agriculture in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Their goal is to contribute to the wider understanding and practice of sustainable agriculture as a means to improving food security and environmental resilience.

Thrive believe that “gardening can help individuals accomplish many things. It can help rebuild a person’s strength after an accident or illness, and can provide a purposeful activity for someone coping with a difficult period in their life.”

The Greenfingers Appeal is currently dedicated to the creation and improvement of the gardens at UK Children’s Hospices.

And Oxfam Unwrapped allow you to “plant seeds of change with gifts that grow”.