Gardening

Gardening is the process of growing plants for their vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, and appearances within a designated space.^[1] Gardens fulfill a wide assortment of purposes, notably the production of aesthetically pleasing areas, medicines, cosmetics, dyes, foods, poisons, wildlife habitats, and saleable goods (see market gardening). People often partake in gardening for its therapeutic, health, educational, cultural, philosophical, environmental, and religious benefits.^[2]

Gardening varies in scale from the 800 hectare Versailles gardens^[3] down to container gardens grown inside. Gardens take many forms, some only contain one type of plant while others involve a complex assortment of plants with no particular order.

Gardening can be difficult to differentiate from farming. They are most easily differentiated based on their primary objectives. Farming prioritizes saleable goods and may include livestock production whereas gardening often prioritizes aesthetics and leisure. As it pertains to food production, gardening generally happens on a much smaller scale with the intent of personal or community consumption.^[4] There are cultures which do not differentiate between farming and gardening.^[5] This is primarily because subsistence agriculture has been the main method of farming throughout its 12,000 year history and is virtually indistinguishable from gardening.^[6][7]