What is regenerative gardening?
Regenerative gardening is a way to create a sustainable ecosystem in your backyard. Regenerative gardens focus on soil health and organic no-till practices. But there's a bit more to it than that.

Regenerative farming is a way to fix the damage caused by conventional farming. Instead, this framework tends to the land in a way that builds soil health. At the same time, regenerative farming grows nutritious food and supports the environment.

You may have heard of the benefits of regenerative farming. Regenerative agriculture is a nature-based solution to climate change. Regenerative agriculture supports the environment and builds resiliency to extreme weather events.

But maybe you aren’t a farmer with acres of land.

The good news is that you don’t need to own a huge property to implement regenerative practices. You can apply regenerative farming techniques into your own backyard with regenerative gardening.

For instance, instead of tilling, layer compost, leaves, or straw on top of your garden beds each season to enhance soil structure and fertility.

This Regenerative Gardening Guide lays out a step-by-step plan to transition your garden. You'll start with the current state of your garden, and put regenerative gardening practices in place one by one.

Maximize Carbon Capture: The Sustainable Benefits of Regenerative Gardening

The benefits of regenerative farming can still apply to smaller regenerative gardens.

Here are the top reasons to grow a regenerative garden:

• Carbon capture increases with regenerative gardening:
  For me, the environmental benefits of regenerative gardening are what attracts me most. Regenerative gardening is a nature-based solution to climate change. It allows us to become stewards of the land as we work to bring as much carbon as possible into the soil.
  
  Regenerative gardens use organic practices to avoid fossil fuels. This keeps petroleum in the ground. Regenerative gardens build soil health, which in turn stores more carbon.
  
  No-till practices keep carbon in the soil to further reduce carbon emissions.
  ‍
• Less input is needed for regenerative gardens:
  Regenerative practices mean that gardens need less water and less weeding. Overall, regenerative gardens need less inputs to thrive. That means regenerative gardens thrive with minimal intervention. So they require less frequent watering and fertilization due to increased organic matter and water retention in the soil.
  ‍
• Resilience to drought or high temperatures:
  With climate change, extreme weather is becoming the norm. Regenerative gardening helps your plants to survive these extreme conditions. This allows you to still get a harvest, regardless of weather patterns.
  ‍
• Improved soil texture and quality with regenerative techniques:
  If your backyard has heavy clay or sandy soil, you know how difficult it can be to grow food. Heavy compaction in clay soil or low water retention in sandy soil causes issues in the garden.
  
  However, there are regenerative practices that offer solutions to both soil troubles. Cover cropping, mulching, and keeping roots in the ground help to improve soil tilth. This means that the soil is easier to work with year after year.
  ‍
• Becoming a land steward as a regenerative gardener:
  Transition your garden into a regenerative space to make a meaningful change. As you improve the land that you live on, you will create a robust ecosystem full of beauty and conservation.

Regenerative Gardening Practices

Before we can look at regenerative gardening practices, we need to look at the basics of what regenerative farming is and how it’s implemented.

Then we can see how to transfer these ideas from a large scale to a small scale backyard.

The principles of regenerative farming are:

• Minimize soil disturbance:
  No-till practices keep the soil microbiome healthy and thriving. Regenerative farmers also try to keep plant roots in the ground whenever possible. These plant roots offer food to the soil biome, and add organic matter. This is an eco-friendly practice because it helps keep stored carbon in the soil.
  ‍
• Focus on the soil more than the crop:
  When soil health becomes the main goal, the plants will become healthier. This is because healthy soil grows more robust and resilient plants.

• Value biodiversity of plants and animals:
  Regenerative agriculture promotes moving away from monoculture. Instead, regenerative farmers interplant species. They aim to have as many plant varieties as possible in a single area. Pollinators, beneficial insects and wildlife are also welcomed into the garden. These critters increase yield and reduce pest pressure.
  ‍
• Integrate livestock in a way that nurtures the soil:
  A regenerative farm can raise sustainable livestock by following pasture rotation and silvipasturing methods.
  ‍
• Always cover the soil:
  Regenerative farmers avoid bare soil. They keep the soil planted and add mulch around crops. Regenerative farmers also plant cover crops to keep the soil planted and covered. All of these techniques keep the soil microbiome happy, hydrated, and temperate. At the same time, the soil gains organic matter.

Regenerative Gardening Transition Plan: A step-by-step guide:

Now we’ll take the above principles and apply them to your garden. You'll be a regenerative gardener in no time!

1. Keep the soil covered by mulching and/or planting your bare soil

Survey your current growing space and make note of any bare soil.

If it’s early spring-mid summer, plant into these bare spaces with seedlings. You can also direct sow seeds to bring life into the soil.

If you have bare soil between live plants, mulch these areas heavily. I recommend organic chopped straw if it’s starting to warm up. Organic weed-free grass clippings also work if it’s a bit cooler out.

You’ll notice that you’ll need to water your garden far less when it’s fully mulched!

If it’s late summer-early autumn, you’re just in time to plant a cover crop. Check out my cover crop guide to find out what to plant to meet the needs of your garden.

If it’s mid-autumn-winter, mulch the soil with fallen leaves, grass clippings, or organic hay. Keep this mulch in place until your planting season begins again.

-> harvest more information: read our full guide to mulching your regenerative garden here or learn which cover crop you should plant here

2. Keep roots in the ground as you harvest your crops

Regenerative gardeners cut any spent plants back instead of pulling them up. Cut any spent plant sabout an inch below the soil surface. Aim to do this when clearing rows or harvesting crops, flowers, or herbs. Obviously this doesn’t work for root crops, but the goal is to leave roots in the ground as much as is practical.

This also applies to cover crops. Allow them to winter-kill, cut them at the base. You can also flatten them with a roller crimper when it’s time for spring planting.

3. Add plant diversity into your garden

Start to diversify the kinds of plants that you are growing.

An easy way to do this is to bring in perennial herbs, shrubs, vines, and flowers into our vegetable gardens. If you have the space to plant a bee garden or pollinator patch, all the better! An eco-friendy garden is one that offers a rich variety of different plants for both humans and animals to enjoy.

Look at your beds and notice if any of them have just one crop in them. Then, make a plan to integrate multiple crops during the next planting cycle. You can also mix herbs and a veg crop in the same bed in the future.

-> harvest more information: learn how biodiversity can help fight climate change

4. If you have chickens or other livestock…

Think about how you can create a space that merges your animals with the garden. You can also create a pasture rotation system if you have enough space.

Try to plant some edible chicken favorites around their coop and roaming area. These tasty treats include sunflowers, mint, basil, and calendula.

-> harvest more information: raise sustainable chickens in your backyard

5. Focus on soil health

You can start a fresh compost pile any time of the year, and add in a vermicomposting system too for good measure. Both techniques are a great way to put your food scraps and garden debris to good use and avoid the landfill.

If it’s autumn, neighbors might have bags of leaves that they would give to you. These leaves will boost your compost pile, or you can use them as mulch.

You might also be able to source free manure locally. Just make sure that it’s as chemical free as possible. Hay and straw can be sprayed with a persistent herbicide that can harm your garden. Unfortunately, I learned this from personal experience.

Ask the farmer if the animals are fed spray-free hay and if the straw is spray-free. You can also see if any other gardeners have gotten manure from the same farm without issues.

Aim for a balance in your compost pile, such as a 3-to-1 ratio of browns (like dry leaves) to greens (like vegetable scraps), for efficient decomposition.

-> Harvest more information: Discover how to build soil health and why it's so important to regenerative gardeners

6. Ditch any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides

Research what other methods you can implement instead.

Note that while copper fungicide/herbicide falls under the “organic” label, there are some negative environmental and health impacts of this chemical, so we do not use it in our garden.

Neem oil may work for you, as may other organic pest control methods such as picking disease resistant varieties, planting flowers for beneficial insects, practicing crop rotation, and even good old-fashioned hand-picking of pests.

Look for organic fertilizers with the OMRI label, as those help the soil microbes to continue their relationship with your plants, in contrast to synthetic fertilizers which replace the soil microbes and so their population declines.

Organic fertilizers are also a more sustainable choice as they are not made from petroleum products, unlike most synthetic inputs. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer also releases harmful greenhouse gases in the form of nitrates. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides also cause water pollution and harm insect populations.

-> harvest more information: explore organic fertilizers and why they are necessary for regenerative gardening practices

7. If you did till your garden in the past, add organic matter on top of existing beds instead

If you have existing beds and it’s late summer or early autumn, plant a cover crop to improve soil tilth. One of my favorite cover crops is daikon radish. Daikon helps improve soil tilth without manual tillage.

Add compost on top of beds, and use a broadfork to loosen up the soil without tillage.

No-till regenerative practices help reduce soil erosion, and are essential in the management of healthy soil.

Use a broadfork in early spring or after harvest to gently loosen the soil without inverting it, which preserves the soil structure and microbial life.

As you cycle through the seasons, keep this checklist in mind so that you can continuously build soil health. Keep the soil planted to maximize photosynthesis and carbon sequestration. Disturb the soil as little as possible to keep carbon in the ground. Embrace plant diversity for a beautiful garden that attracts beneficial insects.

Your new regenerative garden

Now that you have a regenerative garden, you are officially a land steward. Now you capture more carbon in your backyard and tend to a robust ecosystem.

You’ve probably noticed that you need to provide less input for your garden over all. Perhaps there is less work, less water needed, and less weeding. Maybe a heat wave came through, and your crops made it through with very little stress. Or maybe you’ve noticed that your soil is becoming more fluffy in texture.

Regardless, you’ve done something fantastic for the surrounding ecology. You've also stopped spraying toxins for improved human and wildlife health. Your actions will benefit future generations.

Want to learn more about regenerative agriculture? Read our definitive guide to regenerative agriculture here.

Are you totally new to gardening? You'll find our guide on the best books for new gardeners helpful here.

‍