When you think of having a garden, it can be difficult to imagine that it could be a non-eco-friendly part of your home. After all, it’s green, isn’t it?
However, if you use harmful fertilizers or other unnatural compounds in your garden, it’s possible for your garden to be hurting the environment instead of helping it. To make sure that your garden and yard are as eco-friendly as possible, consider using the tips outlined below.
Start Composting
Composting is a great way to be more eco-friendly. Every day the average person creates more than four pounds of trash, and composting can help reduce that amount. Composting is when you take organic materials and let them decompose into simpler organic compounds. These compounds can then be put in your garden beds to use as fertilizer.
Composting doesn’t have to be a difficult process. If you have the room in your yard, you can start a compost pile where you add in your compostable scraps and occasionally “stir” it by overturning the contents of the compost pile. If you don’t think you have a spot far enough from your home to have a full compost pile, you can also get a compost tumbler, which will make it much easier to turn over the contents of your compost and is smaller and more containable.
Keep a small, airtight bin in your kitchen where you can put all of your compostable scraps, and once the bin is full you can take it to your outdoor pile.
Keep it Local
When you’re planning what plants you want to include in your garden and landscaping, make sure to consider what is actually a part of your local ecosystems. Including plants that are meant to grow in your area is greener for a few reasons. First of all, it will help keep your local ecosystem well balanced and you won’t be introducing non-native species, which can become invasive. In addition, the plants that you use will not need extra watering or very much extra attention because they have already evolved to flourish in your area.
Keep Outdoor Living Green
If you’re going to install a patio or another outdoor living space, make sure to consider whether or not you’re being eco-friendly in your project. The home improvement market in the U.S. is growing rapidly — it grew by almost 5.5% in 2019 alone. Part of that market is made up of contractors who know how to make their projects eco-friendly, so make sure you ask any possible contractors about their eco-friendly practices.
One way to make your patio area more eco-friendly is to ditch concrete or other impermeable material and use something that water can get through, like pebbles. If you live in an area with lots of paved roads, driveways, and sidewalks, the impermeable nature of those surfaces can lead to flooding. By using pebbles or gravel instead, water is able to get through much easier, which can help with drainage and prevent flooding, which can be very harmful to the ecosystem.
You should also make sure that you’re using secondhand materials as often as possible for any project in your garden. Whether the materials are completely recycled or just being reused, you should try to buy as few new things as you possibly can. This helps by keeping things that may have become waste stay out of landfills and also shows that there is a demand for this type of product.
Consider Using Gray Water or Rainwater
Gray water is water that has been used in your home, either in a shower or a sink. This water can be used to water your garden and lawn instead of having to use fresh, new water from a hose. Gray water systems can be installed in your home, but if you don’t want to go through that entire process, you can also consider a rainwater collection barrel. For this, you can place a barrel at the bottom of your gutter and make a fitted top for it that has a cut-out for the gutter spout. This way when it gets warm the water won’t evaporate as quickly as it would have otherwise.
Think About Your Lawn
If your lawn is your pride and joy, you don’t necessarily have to get rid of it, though grass is not local to many areas and needs an inordinate amount of water to be as lush and green as it’s supposed to be. If you have areas of your yard that you need to plant grass on, consider hydroseeding. This process includes the grass seed with some other ingredients to help the grass grow and to keep it healthy for some time. The grass will be mostly established after three to four weeks, but results will begin in as few as seven days.
If you live in a drought-ridden area, you may consider not planting grass or replacing it with another ground covering plants. Grass needs a lot of water, so if it’s not usual for your area to get a lot of rain, grass may not be the best option. If you have a gray water system, though, it can still be plausible to keep up your lawn.
Collect Your Seeds
When your plants began to flower and then produce seeds, you can easily collect these. This is helpful because in the future, you won’t have to buy another set of seeds to grow your plant. In addition, you know that that plant has experienced the exact circumstances that it will be exposed to in the upcoming year. This means you can be relatively sure that as long as you continue to care for it, it will continue to flourish in your garden.
Having an eco-friendly garden doesn’t need to be difficult. Instead, it can be a very exciting, easy prospect achieved through small switches over time. From simple things like collecting rainwater and seeds to more complex things like using pebbles or gravel in place of concrete, your actions can make all the difference.
How do you make your garden eco-friendly? What’s your favorite eco-friendly part of your garden? Let us know in the comments!
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