We urban gardeners manage a substantial chunk of the outdoor space in any town or city. There are 30 million gardeners in the UK alone. So what we do impacts our air quality, the survival of wildlife and other environmental issues.
A sustainable garden is also usually cheaper, so when budgets are tight, it is really worth considering sustainability.
Sustainable garden checklist
1) Buy plants sold in recyclable pots. Re-use plastic pots.
2) Try to avoid other one-off plastics… buy bulbs or potatoes in paper bags or compost in re-usable bags
3) Save water. Install large water butts. Don’t water your lawn. Think about how much water a plant will need when you buy it.
4) Make your own compost
5) When buying commercial compost, choose peat-free
6) Re-use or recycle larger items such as tools and furniture. Try eBay, Freecycle, Freegle and charity shops
7) When buying new garden furniture, look for FSC certification and check origins
8) Use biodegradable wooden plant labels
9) Use wool or jute twine ties not plastic
10) Use metal plant supports or make your own from birch twigs
11) Use permeable paving for paths, terraces and parking areas. Limit hard landscaping generally.
12) Plant a tree. Or don’t cut one down. Trees are excellent carbon sinks.
13) Use environmentally friendly pest controls or minimise pest control
14) Plant flowers that are good for pollinators
15) Have hedges instead of fences – hedges offer wildlife habitats and counter air pollution
16) Add bat boxes and bug hotels to the garden, plus twigs and leaves in piles at the backs of borders
And an eco-friendly garden saves you money
I’ve noticed that I am often most eco-friendly in the garden when I’m trying to save money.
If it’s easy to garden sustainably and it saves you money, it’s more likely to become a habit.
And it’s only by changing habits, that we can really have a sustainable garden.
Sustainable gardens and plastic pots
Plants sold in black plastic pots can’t go into our council recycling bins because the automatic sorters can’t pick up the black plastic. So they’ll go into landfill and take centuries to break down. Some councils will take them at the recycling centres, so you can ask.
Several plant growers are experimenting with using recyclable pots. Locally to me, Edible Culture have devised a biodegradable Posipot. And there are other recyclable pots available now. So look for garden centres selling plants in recyclable pots.
And re-use the pots you already have. I have about sixteen years’ worth of plastic plant pots. I really don’t need to buy any more. And I certainly don’t need to fiddle around making seedling pots out of newspaper.
If you don’t have lots of plastic pots, your friends probably do. If you belong to a gardening, book or any other club, you could try a plastic pot swap one day. Or see if your local garden centre will recycle them like Maytree Nursery near me.
Other single use plastics in the garden
Plastic bags with compost, bulbs or plants are also single-use plastics. Maytree Nurseries is also reducing this by selling potatoes in paper bags, rather than pre-packed in plastic. And Edible Culture sell their compost in re-usable bags – you pay £8 for the initial bag of compost, but only £6.50 when you take the bag back for a re-fill.
If you can’t find nurseries or garden centres doing this kind of thing near you, you could suggest it.
Plastic garden netting to keep birds off your crops is another issue, although it can be re-used more than once.
Several friends of mine poke birch twigs in around seedlings to protect them from hungry pigeons. I’ve done this successfully myself and am currently trialling two beds – one protected with birch twigs and one with netting.
I can’t give you an explanation of this, but I do know that it can work.
Save water in the garden
Water butts are not a magic solution to sustainability, because they dry out quickly in droughts. But they help. Buy the largest you can fit in.
And let your lawn go brown. It is not dying, only dormant and will recover. Only newly planted or laid lawns need regular watering in their first summer.
Other plants that really need watering include annuals, vegetables, plants in pots and newly planted shrubs and perennials.
But ideally choose plants that grow well in your climate without too much extra care needed.
The RHS now suggest that when you buy a plant, consider its watering requirements and ask yourself ‘can we afford the watering?’
Make your own compost
Making compost saves you the time and petrol you waste taking garden clippings to the local tip. Compost also returns nutrients to the soil.
But, once again, it’s not the solution to all your compost needs. Personally I find it difficult to make enough compost for my own needs in my middle-sized garden.
The most important thing to understand about making compost is that there are two methods – the fast ‘hot’ method and the slow, easy way.
Personally I do the slow, easy way. But it means that I only make about one third of the compost I need for the garden, and have to buy more.
If you have a small garden and your council does a green waste pick-up, then that is good. We find our garden generates too much waste and the bin isn’t large enough.
What to put in the compost
We use twigs for kindling, logs for the fire and leaves go on the compost. But if you have a lot of bracken-type clippings that take a long time to compost down, you may prefer to burn them in a bonfire. Chop them up to make them compost down faster.
Australian gardening broadcaster and rare plant specialist Stephen Ryan has an arrangement with his local supermarket. He picks up food that’s gone past its sell-by date. He feeds some to his hens and ducks and composts the rest.
Bonfires are not as environmentally-friendly as composting. But they are usually legal in the UK, provided the smoke doesn’t blow across a road.
And bonfire ash is good for the garden – spread it on the beds.
Buy sustainable garden compost -choose peat-free!
The RHS says that gardeners should never use peat-based composts. The damage to the environment is too great.
I was given a bag of Westland’s New Horizon Bio3 peat-free compost to try. I’ve been growing seedlings in it, alongside trays of seedlings grown in ordinary peat-based compost.
So far, I’ve had reasonably good germination. Other excellent peat-free seed and potting composts include Melcourt Sylvagrow and Carbon Gold Biochar.
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