***Collaborative post***
If you love your garden but wish you could get more out of it and run it in a more sustainable way, you’re not the only one. These days, more and more people are thinking about how they can create a sustainable garden. It might seem difficult to know where to start and how to get this right, but we’re here to help you out with that.
It doesn’t have to be an impossible mission and it doesn’t even have to be particularly complicated either. We’re going to talk about some of the practical steps you can take to change your garden in positive ways and ensure it becomes more sustainable and eco-friendly. Find out more below.
Use Solar Power Lighting
First of all, you should think about how you choose to light the social spaces in your garden. If you use lights powered by conventional electric, that’s not a very green or sustainable choice, especially when there are so many better and more sustainable options out there for you to consider instead. Look at solar power lighting solutions and how these might help you to light up your outdoor space in the evening using solar panels that charge a battery during the day when the lights aren’t in use.
Commit to Zero Waste
There’s no reason at all why you should be creating waste in your garden. Many people are now making the commitment to running gardens that operate on a zero waste basis. This means that absolutely nothing gets thrown in landfill and nothing goes to waste. After all, why should it? There’s something that can be done with all of the potential waste that comes out of your garden, and we’re going to talk about some of the specific ideas below.
Grow Your Own Food
Growing your own food is a must if you want to run a sustainable garden. We all need food, but why buy things from a store when you can grow them in your garden instead? It’s a way of consuming the most local of products, and means that you’re not buying food that has been transported over long distances, creating CO2 emissions in the process. Start with a small vegetable patch growing some simple produce and then grow it from there over time. It’ll offer you just what you need.
Create a Compost Heap
This is one of the ways in which you can reduce the amount of waste in your garden. All of the things that are created after weeding and pruning your garden can be thrown on a compost heap and be put to good use. It’s much better to do that than to simply allow your garden waste to go in the bin and ultimately end up in landfill. Instead, you can get some use out of it and actually benefit your garden in a big way. Your own fresh compost will enable you to revitalise your flower beds and plants later on.
Capture, Store and Use Rainwater
Why waste water when you can get all the water you need from the sky? You can use plastic water tanks to collect rainwater and then use that water to keep your flowers and plants hydrated and growing. It’s easy to set up a system like this and it’s essential to do so if you’re serious about making your garden more sustainable and eco-friendly. There are guides out there that’ll help you with putting a tank system in place, so make the most of them. You won’t regret it.
Avoid All Chemicals
There’s no reason why you need to use garden products that are packed full of chemicals. It’s simply not necessary and there are so many better options out there. There’s a growing number of garden products that only use clean and sustainable ingredients, and that means shunning products that are packed full of unhelpful and unhealthy chemicals. If you want to make your garden more sustainable, you should also take these kinds of steps to make it a little cleaner too.
Reuse as Many Resources as Possible
Whenever you get the chance to reuse something in your garden, you should go ahead and do that. You don’t want to be buying new items, implements, pots and tools. Plant pots can be made from all kinds of things from old cardboard crates to disused toilets. There’s no limit to the ways in which you can get creative when it comes to reusing items and putting unwanted things to new uses in your garden, so make this happen. It’ll add new character to your garden and it’ll be sustainable at the same time.
Use Native Plants That Belong in Your Garden
If you want to make sure that your garden is healthy and natural, you should use native and adapted plants. Native plants are one that grow in your location without any human input. Native plants are well suited to your location, the conditions and climate. On top of that, native plants can add a distinctive sense of place to a garden, which is always a positive thing. It’s much easier to maintain a healthy balance in your garden when you have native plants in place.
Save Your Seeds
Finally, you should always remember to save your seeds. You won’t need to buy new seeds all the time if you make use of your own. You can grow flowers or vegetables or fruit and then take the seeds and store them carefully until you want to plant more of that flower or that vegetable. It’s easy to do and it’ll benefit you massively in the long-term as you attempt to expand your garden.
If you want to run your garden in a greener and more sustainable way, these are the things you need to do. Each of these changes will be easy to implement and they’ll enable you to easily run your garden in a sustainable way. Get to work and start making these changes as soon as you can.
