4 Eco-Friendly Tips from My Garden to Yours

Today, I spent the vast majority of the day in my backyard garden or buying related supplies. My garden is one of the most important reasons that I chose this apartment. It’s an urban oasis, where I can enjoy the weather, relax and listen to music while lounging, and escape the hustle and bustle of the city (even if the BQE is just in the distance). I’m lucky to have this space, and I truly think that we would all benefit from our own outdoor space.

When I started gardening it was partly as a hobby, but also as someone who loves the outdoors and being surrounded by nature, I wanted to also have a real connection with plants, the soil, and–let’s be honest–have a good use for all the compost I was making with my bokashi composter. Along the way, I’ve come to learn some useful lessons in how to make a garden more eco-friendly. Here are 4 tips that specifically come from today’s gardening time:

1.Upcycle and use what you’ve got. Most of us have unused supplies that can be re-purposed. To create the border of this garden bed, I took leftover pieces of cedar from my other raised beds and combined them with unused patio blocks that were leftover from the previous tenants’ time in the back yard. In the ‘burbs, I’m sure many people have leftover building materials, and with a little creative thinking, I’m sure there plenty of ways to put them to use.

2. Consider your (non-grass) ground-cover. I think many of us who grew up in the suburbs think of yards as covered in green grass, where you can run around, but the truth is that grass is hard to maintain, uses a ton of water, and doesn’t thrive in well in many different situations (hello, bald spots!). Instead, consider all the different ground-cover plants that are out there. Some are decorative, but many can be walked on (and are labeled as such!), all of them will spread and fill in, with plants suiting a variety of different environments.

3. Buy perennial plants with long growing seasons that are suited to your light conditions. Most amateur gardeners know that you have to seriously consider how the light conditions in your garden will change over the course of the season in order to pick the right plants. Many gardeners also pick perennial plants (which come back year after year) so as to avoid having to replant too much of the garden year after year. Both of these considerations are also eco-friendly because a plant suited to its environment will take less upkeep and annuals take a lot of resources to raise in a green house before you get them, but then you chuck them out at the end of their season.

4. Pick native plants where possible. Native plants are suited to the local area. They therefore need less maintenance and resourced. They are also more likely to survive in any unpredictable weather. Hurricanes here in the Northeast can destroy a garden, and I’ve heard it again and again from gardeners that the plants that come right back are the natives.