The Power of Veganic Gardeners
Part Three
One person going vegan will not, on their own, save the world but collectively we can make a difference.
The laws of supply and demand are simple enough: as more people choose plant-based foods, markets shift, production changes and political space opens up for bolder policy. We’ve already seen this with the explosion of plant-based products and the growing number of farmers beginning to explore arable and agroforestry alternatives.
If you’re already vegan and gardening, you’re in a particularly powerful position. You understand, instinctively, the joy of watching life return to a space, and you’ve already taken the step of aligning your diet with your values. The next step is often the hardest: talking about it.
I know many vegan gardeners are wary of speaking up for animals in horticultural spaces. I know I was ten years ago and, on occasions, still am. It can feel awkward, strident, or like an invitation to be pigeonholed as “political” in a world that prefers plants, mulch and cake. But the animal agriculture lobby spends enormous sums to keep the realities of the system carefully out of sight and out of mind. The more we avoid the topic for fear of ruffling feathers, the longer that silence serves the status quo.
If you’re anxious about alienating friends, family or colleagues, it might help to look at it from a wider perspective. Future generations – your own family included – will live with the consequences of what we do, or don’t do, right here and now. History tends to be kinder to those who spoke up early, even if they were unpopular at the time. Speaking for animals in a culture that normalises their exploitation is not something to be embarrassed about; it’s an attempt at basic decency.
It still blows my mind that 70+ billion land animals and trillions of marine animals are killed each year for food, most of them after short, miserable lives. If you were in their position, would you want people who could act on your behalf to stay quiet because it felt awkward, or would you want them to find their voice?
With 2–4°C of global warming still being discussed as a plausible end-of-century trajectory, time is not on our side. The transition towards a plant-based, nature-rich food system is happening – but the question is whether it’s happening fast enough to avoid the worst tipping points.
One easy way of a soft approach is to ask your horticultural organisations to provide plant-based food at their events, shows and conferences. The good thing here is that plant-based food is 100% inclusive. So, unlike carnist food, everyone can eat it.
So, Can Gardens Save the Planet?
Honestly, on their own, no. The brutal truth is that gardens, no matter how lovingly designed and tended for both humans and non-human lifeforms, they cannot compensate for a food system that devotes most of its land to livestock and treats nature as collateral damage.
But gardens can certainly help if they become gateways of inspiration and hope. They can be the places where people fall in love with wildlife, where they see insects return, where they experience directly how quickly life responds when we give it half a chance. From there, the conversation naturally extends outwards: from ponds to rivers, from flower borders to farmland, from what we plant to what we eat.
If we use our gardens as launchpads for broader change – modelling vegan organic practices, hosting conversations about diet, supporting rewilding and tree planting beyond our fences – then they can become part of a much bigger, more hopeful story.
That’s enough for now. Future musings, I’m sure, will be less intense but I’ve wanted to get this off my chest for some time now and I hope it’s something people will take time to read instead of rolling their eyes whenever they hear the ‘V’ word.
Please, at the very least, think about it. The Garden of Eden, as it were, may well be broken, but the Garden of Vegan, scaled up from backyards to landscapes, can certainly help to fix it.
As gardeners, we are well-positioned to play a leading part in, what may well turn out to be, the most important of all movements because at the end of the day, IT’S ALL ABOUT PLANTS.
