Eco-Friendly Gardening

If you want to garden in a smart and eco-friendly way, you need to garden sustainably. In this section, you’ll find recommendations for eco-friendly home gardening, including making and using compost, attracting beneficial insects, beekeeping, rain barrels, rain gardens, and mulch. Find tips for pet-friendly gardening and integrated pest management.

What Is Sustainable Gardening

While there is no technical definition of sustainable gardening, the concept is easy to explain. Sustainable gardening is a way of gardening that causes no harm to the environment and those who live in it. The methods used are low impact and employ thoughtful use of resources. Rather than battling nature, sustainable gardening is gardening with nature. It is an excellent way of creating biodiversity at home.

Integrated pest management methods are generally employed in sustainable gardening. This means you’ll be encouraging beneficial insects into your garden, managing the health and beauty of your garden with minimal pesticide use, and using organic and biological controls.

Sustainable Gardening Practices

If you’re interested in doing your part for sustainability, there are several things you can do straight away.

Garden Compost

Composting and vermicomposting are ways of turning organic material into a rich soil conditioner. It’s excellent for sustainable gardening, and home composting allows you to create your own natural plant fertilizer.

Start by saving the organic matter from your kitchen. However, you don’t want to compost meat scraps, as these can attract pests such as rats. In the fall, rather than bagging up your fallen leaves, put them in the compost pile. When you’ve finished cutting the lawn, save yourself time and unnecessary effort disposing of the clippings by putting them in with other garden waste materials.

If you’ve also got chickens in your garden, you can use their manure as a soil amendment. Poultry manure and litter is an excellent source of garden organic matter and nutrients.

Water Conservation in the Home Garden

Water is a precious commodity, and with people currently using more freshwater than rainfall replenishes, it’s vital to practice water conservation as much as possible. Pennsylvania is blessed with a good supply of water, but not all of it is clean water.

You can start by watering your garden efficiently and employing the basic principles for a water-efficient garden. There are many opportunities for water conservation outside your home, such as managing precipitation run-off, planting stormwater control systems, collecting rainwater, and building a rain garden.

Several native plants are suitable for rain gardens. Native large trees include sweet and black gum, and river birch. Perennial plants include blue flag iris, cinnamon fern, and marsh marigold. Rain gardens help to conserve water but also help to create biodiversity and habitat.

Stormwater management plays a crucial role in sustainable gardening. When not properly managed, stormwater can cause flooding, ponding in lawns, driveway erosion, and pollution.

Attracting Pollinators and Beneficial Insects in Your Garden

From pollinating fruits and vegetables to managing pests, beneficial insects play an essential role in your home garden. The world is currently facing an imminent crisis when it comes to pollinators, particularly the bee. Luckily, there are things you can do to attract pollinators and beneficial insects into your garden.

Some of the things you can do to conserve wild bees in Pennsylvania include protecting their natural habitats, planting pollinator-friendly flowers and plants, landscaping to attract and conserve beneficial insects, and providing access to water. Bees are one of the most beneficial insects, and you can help their decreasing populations by getting started in beekeeping.

Once you’ve attracted the pollinators into your garden there are best practices to follow to help them overwinter. Delaying your garden cleanup until spring, for example, is a simple way to encourage overwintering insects.

Native Garden Plants

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, a native plant is one that occurred within the region before settlement by Europeans. Native plants are good to have in your garden because they preserve biodiversity, are not invasive, and are easier to grow and cheaper to maintain. You should, however, be aware that some native plants might be poisonous to animals.

Native plants could be ferns, grasses, perennial and annual wildflowers, woody trees, shrubs, and vines. Native herbaceous perennial plants, for example, can bring year-round interest to the garden.

Large expanses of lawns have become very popular, but they can affect the biodiversity of an area. However, there are alternatives to traditional turfgrass, such as white clover, black medic, and birdsfoot trefoil.

Hedgerows can play an important role in a sustainable garden. They provide a haven for wildlife and, at the same time, cleverly screen your property.