Ask HN: Why is home ownership linked with gardening? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is home ownership linked with gardening?

4 pointsamichail8 comments

What about people who want to own a home but have nothing to do with gardening? They may not want to waste any brain cycles even thinking about it.

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I think most people that own homes don't have gardens, although I think it would be a good idea if most people did if they had time to do it (I didn't this year except for a single indoor basil plant, but I did have a small one in previous years, and plan to try again next year). There's some good personal health and environmental benefits to having a home garden[1].

It doesn't have to take a ton of brain cycles either. Buy a raised garden bed, fill it with soil, pick out some seeds, water them regularly, periodically check them for disease, etc. Doesn't take much more effort than five minutes a day, usually, beyond the first couple of weeks. If you screw something up one year, try something a bit different next year.

But it doesn't seem to be the norm to have a garden. I only know one couple that have a home garden of the people I know.

[1]: https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/ilriverhort/2020-08-03-...

Odd question. You don't need to have a garden (unless you have a HOA). It's your land, after all.

That said, we displaced nature with cities, so we can also put some back. Gardens are nice to look at. Plants also help lower the temperature in an area, and at a macro scale, this makes a real difference in a concrete jungle. You can go further and have something like a reed bed sewage system; have the garden work for you, and the planet. Composting is a great way to deal with kitchen scraps which otherwise go to landfill, and, if you're lazy you can do a worm farm instead for similar results.

Life is short, but also can be boring, and they are something to do; to care for, for better or worse. Lastly, growing food in a garden is fulfilling, and a way to save money. It doesn't need to be a huge effort, and can be very fun. We've grown over a dozen leeks last season, get a handful of blueberries every day (very easy to grow blueberries and worth it I'd say) and herbs we like on-demand.

There are plenty of people in this camp. One can remove the top-soil, level the ground, put down a layer or two of garden cloth and then cover it with smooth rocks or fake grass. One could even pay people to do this for them.

I have a homestead and believe it or not I would never plant anything on the ground. I have great soil but I would also be fighting with the critters, all of whom I feed. Rather I would put everything in an environment controlled geothermal critter-proof greenhouse. That is on my list of things to do but I only get half the year to build anything. The other half of the year everything is covered in snow and ice.

This might be a regional language difference, but do you mean maintaining landscaping, or growing vegetables? I agree with the previous commenter - just ignore the whole thing and mow two or three times in the summer to keep it from getting too high. There's no reason you have to grow vegetables if you don't want to, and maintaining a lawn is a huge waste of time and resources.

Definitely don't mow every week, but 2-3 times in a season might be a bit on the low side also, unless you want an extremely annoying time mowing and (if you have small dogs at least) that have a hard time maneuvering your back yard, and likely end up with nests of baby bunnies for your dogs to discover and kill (my dogs have killed at least one before we fenced off the burrow every year the past three years).

I tend to mow about once every three weeks and even that can be a bit of a pain if there's been a lot of growth.

I do like to keep a couple patches of unmowed clover or tall plants for butterflies and bees, though.

Also I have an electric mower, so I'm not (at least as far as I know, and not directly) burning fossil fuels to run the mower.

To offer a simple answer: because gardening is an investment, and people prefer to make investments in things they own.

To make a broader observation: arguably one of the keys to a wealthy society is strong laws that protect private property (houses, businesses, etc.), because of just this phenomenon.

I live in a neighborhood filled with beautiful gardens, and I think each one is a labor of love by the homeowner.

I have artificial turf in my entire backyard, and have no garden. Some people want to own a home, and not waste much time with maintenance.

Let your garden go wild. Better for nature (insects), hardly any maintenance and helps keep the temperature down in summer.

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