Sustainable Gardening Guide
A sustainable garden is one that gives back to the environment. This gardening guide teaches you how and provides apartment friendly options. Gardening is such a rewarding hobby to take up. Not only can we quite literally receive fruit for our labor, but gardening can have a positive impact on local wildlife and pollinators, and improve environmental impact as individuals and communities.
What If You Don’t Have A Yard To Garden In?
If you don’t have a yard, don’t let that stop you from pursuing this fun activity. Why not search to see if there’s a local community garden nearby? Alternatively, there’s plenty you can do within your home to grow houseplants, herbs, and vegetables.
Apartment Gardening
A great entry step to indoor gardening is getting yourself a houseplant and learning how to take care of it with consistent watering and fertilizing. We recommend Modern Sprout’s Organic Plant Nutrients to refresh your plant’s soil.
From there, try growing plants from seeds (on a balcony or patio, or indoors near a well-lit window). A planter kit is a great option to get you started. You can even make it an educational family activity with a microgreens kit. When your microgreens are ready for harvest, you can add them to your salads or sandwiches. Herb jars are also great to line up along windowsills to grow all the herbs you need, straight from your kitchen.
Another fun activity to try indoors or in a courtyard space is propagating. This is where you can grow new plants from the cuttings of your indoor plants or herbs. Check out these botanical keepers to easily propagate plants, no matter what vessel you use.
How To Set Up An Eco-Friendly Garden
Gardening in itself can be a positive act for our planet! But if you’d like to go a step further and ensure your gardening habits and tools aren’t hurting your local ecosystems, note our tips below.
Plant A Native Garden
One of the most sustainable gardening tips is to choose plants that belong to the natural ecosystem of where you’re planting. What to plant will vary by your country, region, and even the area of your city! Search for endemic species that belong to your area.
Plan Your Flower Garden Based On Bloom Time
Keep the pollinators happy by planting a variety of flowers that bloom during different times of the year. This way, you’ll always have flowers in your garden to brighten the day!
Use eco-friendly soil
Not all soil is great for the environment. Search for soil that is free from harmful chemicals or toxins that will pollute your garden. If you have a home composting system, use your organic home compost to boost the nutrients in your soil.
Plant Seasonal Produce
Growing your own fruit and veg is fun and positive activity to reduce your environmental footprint. Not only are you cutting out all emissions that would usually occur from transporting your food to your home, planting fruit and veg is great for your garden’s ecosystem – including the bugs and bees! Check out our Year Round Produce Guide by Hemisphere to learn what to harvest, and when.
Invest In Gardening Tools To Last
When buying new tools for the garden, it’s worthwhile to buy well-made tools that are built to last. You’ll thank yourself later when you don’t have to replace that plastic rake every few months. For cutting herbs, we’d recommend these sturdy shears made from pradu wood and stainless steel by Verve Culture.
Compost Scraps
Did you know that more than 133 billion pounds of food goes to waste every year in the US? This waste releases 1.6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Home composting is a great way to prevent food waste from releasing methane in landfills. It also means you’ll be making rich nutrients to add to your soil.
Let Your Lawn Grow (And Go Brown!)
The wildflowers that grow from our lawns are great for the insects, so let your lawn become a meadow! For those in drier climates, avoid wasting water in the warmer months and let your lawn go dormant – it will grow back with the cooler months.
Try Permaculture Gardening
Permaculture is a practice that works with the natural processes of the land. Learn about the permaculture design principles and adopt these within your own garden.
Set Up Bee Hotels, Bird Baths, and Bird Houses/Boxes
Create a haven for the birds and bees within your garden by installing a bee hotel and bird boxes. Bird baths can also be a nice addition to your garden to attract more birds and keep them hydrated in the warmer months. When it comes to feeding your local birds, be mindful that what you feed them is healthy for them. In some parts of the world, it’s not recommended to feed wild birds at all.
Plant Trees
Planting a tree in your garden is not only a meaningful activity to take part in, knowing it might be there for decades or centuries to come, but you’re also planting a home for your local wildlife. Check out these one-for-one tree starter kits, which, for every kit bought, plants a tree through American Forests, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring healthy forest ecosystems.
A sustainable garden is one that gives back to the environment – more than what it takes. There are many small changes we can make to our gardening habits to improve our eco-friendly practices. Above all, make sure you keep your local ecosystem in mind, keep the wildlife happy with plenty of flowers and havens to hide, and avoid toxic chemicals and pollutants in the products you use.
