Percy Joins 1% for the Planet

A garden should give something back. Here's how we're turning that belief into a commitment.

I started Percy because I love to garden. But also because I realized that taking care of a garden has the potential to take care of a lot more than just veggies.

Millions of households around the world have a home garden.

When that many gardeners are making decisions about what to plant, what to spray, and what to pull, that adds up to a lot of beds doing a lot more good for the world than they get credit for.

That's why, when I started building Percy, I made a promise that had nothing to do with features. Whatever Percy became, it should help gardens, but also all the other little critters that depend on them.

Today Percy is taking a big step toward keeping that promise:

Percy is now a member of 1% for the Planet.

1% for the Planet is a movement started by Yvon Chouinard (the founder of Patagonia) and Craig Mathews (the founder of Blue Ribbon Flies) to bring together a global network of businesses and organizations to pledge support to environmental causes.

What does 1% for the Planet membership mean for Percy?

Percy has committed to contributing 1% of its annual revenue to approved environmental partners through 1% for the Planet. We're starting with a focus on organizations working to restore wildlife habitat and connect the small patches of nature around us, including Homegrown National Park in the US and The Wildlife Trusts in the UK.

Why gardens matter beyond the garden gate

Percy is built on the idea that our gardens are part of something larger. And that comes with responsibility. One yard with an organic vegetable garden and a patch of native plants is a lovely thing. Thousands of gardens, planted and cared for with wildlife in mind, can begin to function like one big nature reserve: a network of places where bees, butterflies and birds can find food, shelter and a place to raise the next generation.

That idea isn't mine. It belongs to people who have spent their lives on it.

That's why our 1% for the Planet pledge is going to support some of those people: two of the organizations already doing the work. One on each side of the Atlantic.

The two we're starting with

Homegrown National Park, co-founded by ecologist Doug Tallamy and Michelle Alfandari, is a grassroots movement encouraging people to restore habitat where they live, work and play.

They believe what we believe: that a home gardener planting natives and removing invasives in an ordinary yard can play a meaningful part in restoring biodiversity.

Millions of small patches tended with an eye toward stewardship can add up to an area the size of a national park. That's the future Percy is built to support.

(If you want the longer version of how I fell down this rabbit hole — involving a privet hedge, an X-ray-vision moment on a dog walk, and a block of Japanese knotweed — I wrote about it in What a Plant App Owes the World.)

The Wildlife Trusts are helping create and connect Nature Recovery Networks across the UK, linking gardens, parks, verges, reserves and rivers so wildlife can move, feed and breed. It's the same belief from the other side of the ocean: a single garden can do more when the one next to it is giving nature a helping hand, too. That's the world Percy is trying to help gardeners build, one patch at a time.

Two countries, two grassroots movements, one idea. Both of them believe what we believe: in the power of connecting ordinary gardens to create an extraordinary impact.

This part is yours

Here's what I most wanted to say. This pledge isn't really ours. It's yours.

Percy is a small, independent, not-venture-backed thing. There are no investors to please and no ads to sell. Every subscription is one gardener deciding this is worth paying for.

So when Percy contributes to Homegrown National Park and The Wildlife Trusts, that's your garden, your Sungolds, your dill, the swallowtail that inspected them, reaching a little past its own fence.

You were already gardening for more than yourself. Now a small part of that goes further.

Thank you for being here.