We use the word sustainable rather a lot these days.

Sustainable landscapes. Sustainable production. Sustainable gardens. Sustainable cities. Sustainable horticulture.

It is a worthy word — but I sometimes wonder whether we use it so often that we have stopped asking what it actually means.

So here is my question:

What exactly are we sustaining?

A crop? A landscape? A business? A particular level of production? A beautiful garden? Or the living systems that make all of those things possible?

I have been pondering this for some time.

In horticulture, sustainability is often discussed in terms of efficiency: using less water, reducing inputs, improving irrigation, recycling materials or producing more with less.

All worthwhile.

But surely that is only part of the story.

A horticultural practice might be very efficient and still gradually diminish its soil. A landscape might use less water but contribute little to biodiversity. A planting might look magnificent when it is installed but create an extraordinary maintenance burden for the next 30 years.

And we can produce plants efficiently without necessarily asking enough questions about where those plants will eventually go and what sort of landscapes we are helping to create.

Perhaps we need to turn the question around.

Instead of asking:

“Is this sustainable?”

perhaps we should ask:

“What is this practice sustaining — and what might it be diminishing?”

That little change of language makes us think rather differently.

It asks us to consider soil as a living system, not simply something that holds a plant upright.

It asks what happens to water after we use it.

It asks whether our plant choices contribute to biodiversity, cultural meaning, resilience and human wellbeing.

And it asks one of the most important questions of all:

Are the decisions we make today reducing the choices available to those who come after us?

For me, this is where horticulture becomes much more than the technical cultivation of plants.

I describe a horticulturist as one who practises the art and science of cultivating and caring for plants.

The word caring matters.

Australia also offers us a much older way of thinking about our relationship with the land.

First Nations concepts around Caring as Country encourage us to think beyond simply managing a piece of land. Country is a living system of relationships — people, plants, animals, water, soils, culture, knowledge and place.

That challenges the rather convenient idea that humans stand outside nature and simply manage it.

We don’t.

We are part of it.

For horticulturists, I think that carries a professional responsibility.

Whether we work in food production, nurseries, parks and gardens, urban landscapes, streetscapes, ornamental horticulture or natural resource management, our decisions influence living systems.

A nursery influences the landscapes of tomorrow through the plants it produces today.

A horticulturist specifying trees for a new development is making decisions that may still be visible long after they have retired.

Someone managing soil today can either improve its biological capacity or quietly pass a problem on to the next person.

And the beautifully designed garden that requires heroic quantities of water, fertiliser and maintenance to keep it looking beautiful?

Perhaps it wasn’t quite so clever after all.

None of this means that horticulture should ignore economics. Businesses must remain viable. People need employment. We need food production, functioning cities and productive industries.

But profitability and productivity cannot be our only measures of success.

Perhaps our professional scorecard needs to be broader: soil function, water integrity, biodiversity, cultural responsibility, viable livelihoods and the condition in which we leave the land.

That brings me back to where I started.

Rather than asking how we can make horticulture less damaging, perhaps the more interesting question is:

How do we practise horticulture as an act of care?

I don’t pretend that there is a simple answer.

In fact, I rather hope there isn’t one.

Good questions should make us stop, think, discuss and occasionally change our minds.

So next time someone tells you that a garden, development, nursery, production system or horticultural practice is “sustainable”, perhaps ask one more question:

Sustaining what?

The answer may be considerably more interesting than the label.

Cheers Annette 

This blog is drawn from my September 2026 discussion paper, “The Professional Horticultural Industry and the Application of ‘Sustainability’.”