Sustainable gardening isn’t hard: nurture your soil, save your seeds … and compost
The dictionary has it wrong. Gardening isn’t about plants, it’s about everything else: the soil, the insects, the birds, mammals and reptiles, and how you sit in this world. The plants are the final flourish, the gift of reciprocity from all the others.
This is why, if your aim is just growing plants, gardening can be frustrating: the garden (AKA all of the above) will often laugh at you and send you slugs or bindweed. For a garden to be successful it has to acknowledge the desires of the non-humans, too. In this way, gardening becomes less an act and more a relationship with your soil and the many things she supports.