There are so many ways to be more sustainable within your garden and often it can be little changes that not only aid your plants’ growth but allow you to help the environment in the process.

To help you along, our team has provided 5 useful ways that you can consider becoming more sustainable:

Soil Improvement

Improving your soil is the foundation to healthy plants. Most people have now heard of peat-free compost, but we can go one step further. Add humus to soil as it is high in nutrients and helps to retain moisture, meaning less watering is needed. If you have time, try to make your own garden compost as this will act as a brilliant soil improver. Lay mulches such as Bloomin’ Amazing or composted Bark on top of soil for weed control and to reduce erosion in the rain.

Plant Choice

Picking the right plants is an easy way to have a more sustainable garden. By choosing the right plants for your garden type and planting them in the correct conditions for their needs, your garden will require less watering and feeding. Think about co-planting or including plants for insects and native wildlife as they can be a gardener’s best friend, naturally helping with pest control.

Watering

We all need to water our gardens, especially in the scorching heat of the summer, but we can plan and save water through the rainy spells with the use of a water butt. Watering at the right time of the day will also help increase water uptake from the soil. Water late in the evening or early morning before the sun is at its highest. Another water saving method is by using seep hoses or an irrigation system which allows for a more efficient watering process, as it directs water into the soil only where needed.

Lawn Treatments

The easiest way to be more sustainable with a lawn-based garden is by reducing cutting in the summer. Grass helps with carbon dioxide intake, and by using a greater mix of grass varieties and allowing low growing wildflowers such as clover, bugle, vetches, self-heal, and violets to bloom, you can increase biodiversity with great benefits to pollinators.

Habits

As they say… It is hard to break a habit, but changing the way you act and think about gardening can massively improve sustainability within your own garden. Try being more tolerant and worry less about having the perfect cut lawn, work alongside nature rather against it, and reduce the use of chemicals often used as a quick fix.

Try growing your own fruit and vegetables. Enjoy the time of nurturing your crops to grow from seed to plant to their eventual fruiting, before picking and eating for dinner. The time it takes for these crops to be produced brings with it an appreciation of food and with that an awareness of how much food waste we produce. Use leftover food waste for composting and create a cycle that in time will keep on giving.

Mike