HORTICULTURE - THE ART AND SCIENCE OF GARDENING
Horticulture by itself is a practical and applied science, which means it can have significance in our everyday lives. As community gardens cannot actually compete with market-based land uses, it is essential to find other ways to understand their various benefits such as their contribution to social, human, and financial well-being.
According to various studies over the years, nature has a very positive impact over human health and even more so in an emotional and psychological sense. Trees, grass, and flower gardens, due to their presence as well as visibility, increase people's life satisfaction by reducing fatigue and irritation and restoring a sense of calm. In fact Honey man tested the restorative value of nature scenes in urban settings and discovered that vegetation in an urban setting produced more mental restoration as opposed to areas without vegetation. In addition, areas with only nature did not have as much of a positive psychological impact as did the combination of urban areas and nature.
Gardens and other green spaces also increase social activity and help in creating a sense of place, apart from their various other purposes such as enhancing the community by mediating environmental factors.
There is also a huge disparity in the availability of sources that provide nutritious and affordable foods especially around urban centers which have problems of poverty, lack of public transport and abandonment by supermarkets.
Therefore inner city community gardens can be valuable sources of nutrition at an affordable cost in the most easily accessible way. In order to understand and thereby maximize the benefits of urban horticulture, it is essential to document the effects of horticulture activities and quantify the benefits so that governments and private industries can make the appropriate changes. Horticulturists have always been involved in the botanical and physical aspects of horticulture but an involvement in its social and emotional factors would be highly beneficial to communities, cities and to the field of horticulture and its profession.
International society for Horticultural Science recognized this need for research on the functional use of plants in an urban setting along with the need
of
Improved communication between scientists in this field of research and people who utilize plants.
The Commission for Urban Horticulture was established in 1982 which deals with plants grown in urban areas, management techniques, and the functional use of these plants as well the shortcomings of the current lack of knowledge regarding this field. The establishment of such a commission is an important indicator that this topic has reached a level of international recognition.
Economic benefits
There are many different economic benefits from gardening from saving money purchasing food and even on the utility bills. Developing countries can spend up to 60-80 percent of income on buying food alone.
In Barbara Lake, people are saving money on buying food, having roof top gardens are also becoming popular. Having green roofs can reduce the cost of heating in the winter and help stay cool in the summer. Green roofs also can lower the cost of roof replacement. While green roofs are an addition to urban horticulture people are eating healthy while also improving the value of their property.
Importance of Horticultural Research
These research challenges should draw on developments in a range of disciplines ranging from genome sequencing, metabolomics, nutritional studies, systems biology, mathematical modeling over a wide range of scales, automation and robotics. Against this background, it is now essential that researchers, industry and policy makers work much more closely together to develop a strategy for maximizing the economic and societal benefits from Horticulture in the medium to long term. We propose a strategy where the stakeholder groups work together at National levels to ensure the importance and potential of Horticulture is understood and that we work together at the European level to ensure that Horticulture is fully integrated into consideration of future Framework programmes.
