Eco Friendly House And Garden

Tips On How to Create And Manage Your Environmentally Friendly Gardens.

There are many things you can do around your garden that can make it more environmentally friendly - and this doesn’t just entail dragging bath water in buckets to the garden or picking slugs off your plants under the moonlight!

More people are moving into their gardens to make a difference to their lives, either to enrich the wildlife they attract, or to grow their own food and rear their own chickens!

This article hopes to highlight a few things that you might not have thought of in your garden plans, and explains why they will benefit you and your family.

Weeding:
Try to make time to weed by hand - not only does this reduce your dependence on artificial and possibly toxic chemicals, it will also give you a little bit of exercise and allow your skin to produce some Vitamin D - essential for health!

Obviously you will need some tools to weed with - but try to use manual equipment to do so. Not only is is quieter (there’s nothing more annoying than finally getting out in the garden to enjoy a good book and next door start their leaf blower or hedge trimmer!!) but it uses less energy. No petrol or electricity is needed to use your favourite pair of shears!

If you do have an extensive lawn or plenty of hedges, etc - then large - and often expensive - equipment may well be required. But rather than buying it all yourself and then leaving it in the shed until next year - why not borrow or hire a neighbors. Some communities join together to buy ’shared’ equipment which you rotate through the group.

However if you do need these things - then it may well be cheaper to pay for a professional gardening company to do it once or twice a year for you, rather than buy, store and repair all your own items. This will then, of course, free you up some valuable time to do something more fun!

Avoid mowing your lawn in summer as young amphibians may well be killed.

Plants:
Make sure you don’t use peat products in your garden. Not only is it taken from a fragile and irreplaceable habitat - it is also a carbon sink - basically it is keeping all the carbon it absorbed years ago within itself. Digging it up releases this carbon into the atmosphere again - and I think we already have enough up there already!

Source local, native seeds if possible to limit invasive species gettting a hold here. Also local plants will be best suited to the environment you live in, therefore limiting their damage in terms of extra water demands and possible toxins if eaten by our native wildlife. Hopefully you will help to increase biodiversity with your choices and start to attract local species instead of killing them! Ideally, you would aim for the most drought-hardy versions of your selected plants where possible to reduce demands.

Ponds:
By putting in a garden pond, you could also attract frogs and toads who delight in eating garden pests! And you could also attract a whole host of other garden-friendly pest controllers with the mini wetland you create!

Ideally, you wouldn’t put fish in a wildlife pond as they may well eat insects, amphibians and their young. Also many products need to be used to keep the fish healthy including energy sapping filters and pumps (unless you install solar equipment) and these can go against the ‘eco-friendly’ grain so to speak. Having a few healthy fish at the expense of a delightful and welcoming wildlife pond teeming with local species and plants is your choice in the end.

Try to avoid to much fuss over the pond in summer as many creatures will be breeding and there will be young all around. You could throw them out if you start weeding!

Messy Area:
By making sure there is a part of your garden that is a bit dishevelled will ensure that more wildlife will find your garden a safe haven. Essential to attract is the humble bumble bee and you can do this by offering it a home in a hole close to the ground - they will help pollinate your plants and vegetables through the summer.

Your compost heap is an essential part of a sustainable garden - even if you are not growing your own veg. Plants can do very well on the composted result of your table scraps and dead leaves (it also saves a long drive to the amenity facilities to dump all your green waste too!)

Make sure you let nettles grow in a controlled area of your garden as well, as they are a great nitrogen fixer - making the earth beneath then become more fertile.

Ideally, your messy area and lawn should be proportionally larger than any paved or concreted areas, as these hard impermeable surfaces will increase rain run off during storms. As a result, it will divert valuable water away from your garden plants and send it (along with everyone elses run-off) into the drains and nearby creeks and streams. After long periods of heavy rain this could easily increase the risk of localised flooding as all the water gets to the waterways at the same time rather than slowly filtering through the ground first!

Pets:
Make sure that your pets are not causing a problem for wildlife or your garden. Cats for example catch mice and other small rodents which unfortunately is having a disastrous effect on bumble bees. These insects like to use old rodent burrows for their new nests, but if there aren’t any rodents digging the burrows in the first place - you can see the problem!

They also kill frogs, toads and wild birds.

Ducks are a tiny bit messier than chickens but they just love slugs and will eat them for you all day. However, they may destroy some plants along the way! Ducks will produce less eggs though if you were looking for a steady supplier!

Guinea pigs make great electricity-free lawn mowers and can keep grass down perfectly low if you rotate them around your garden in their spacious run. Rabbits also eat grass but will almost always burrow into your lawn creating a bit of a mess! Both will eat all the fresh table scraps you can offer and their bedding can be composted.

So, go get outside - and start developing you environmentally friendly gardens into something you can be proud of!!!

Are You Thinking About Creating a Wildlife-Friendly Pond in Your Garden? Well here are a few pointers for you…….

There was a massive reduction in garden ponds and even those on farmlands - and as a result a lot of native mammals have lost their homes! It’s amazing how many animals rely on them not only for living in or breeding around - but as stop-overs on their way somewhere else!

And anyway - why should you just do it for the wildlife - a garden pond is a great place for you to relax yourself after a busy week working. Get yourself a comfortable chair, a drink and a good book and just sit back!

If you are thinking of creating a pond from scratch, then you have an advantage as you can make sure that it is shaped to suit the wildlife you want to see as well making it the safest pond you can and as large as you like! Big is best here.

Where:
A shady site will attract different species to a bright one so check your preferred species with the layout of your garden. If it is shallow and in direct sun you will almost certainly get an algal bloom which can be a nuisance - but could be skimmed off and used for compost!

Smaller ponds may well dry out in sun as they should only be topped up with rainwater. Never be tempted to use tap water to fill up a wildlife pond as you could kill almost everything in it!

A shallow pond will be a favourite for frogs, whereas a deeper one may well attract newts - although the deeper ones are more dangerous for small mammals (and children) and so need an escape route built in to allow creatures to climb out if necessary.

Obviously, a wildlife pond needs to be accessible by these creatures in the first place - so don’t expect your pond to become home to amphibians if it is surrounded by paving or gravel. Make sure tufty grass, lawns and shaded moist ground surround your pond - allowing them to walk or slither in from neighboring gardens or parks.

Safety:
If you have young children, make sure that you fence off the pond, or cover it with a secure metal grid. Ponds can be great fun, but they must be safe.

This counts for mammals too.

When:
If starting from scratch, start digging in the fall, when the ground is softer and the weather is bad (as this will allow it to fill up with rainwater. Make sure the bottom is filled with clay or clean sand rather than topsoil and make sure you have gently sloping sides leading in to it on at least one side. Ideally let this edge have direct contact with an unchecked lawn, allowing the marginal water plants move out onto the lawn a bit to help the transition.

The pond needn’t be over 50cms at it’s deepest - and this is safest for young children - although if over 75cm deep you may well avoid the whole thing freezing solid in a bad winter!

If your garden pond is built in direct sunlight, make sure that taller plants are around the edge to help keep the water cooler and a bit shaded. It’s not a problem to let the water level drop a bit in summer as the wet mud on the ledges will be great for invertebrates!

Fall is a great time to clean out your pond too. Amphibians have completed their life-cycles, the water in the pond will be a bit lower to make your job easier - but make sure that you don’t leave too much open water as this can be unattractive to many species. Offer up-rooted plants to your neighbors or compost them. Ideally you wouldn’t throw them into the ‘wild’ as they may contain invasive or non-native species imported in to the nursery you brought them from!

Plants:
Be aware that you may need to add some species for pond health - not all pond life can walk or float in the wind! There are lots of choices for plant-life but make your choice well.

Only buy native species when stocking up. Definitely avoid buying foreign species as they may be invasive and overrun the rest of your garden, but native species will be the best for native wildlife. Many animals have evolved to benefit from certain plants and this is true for your ponds.

Encourage a mixture of submerged, floating and emergent plants to your garden pond so they offer shelter and protection for your wildlife, but also a range of habitats for breeding and rearing young. Avoid using chemical to encourage their growth - or to reduce their numbers - as this will no doubt impact the wildlife.

Many water plants are very fast growing, so resist the temptation to make the pond perfect on day 1, and let native species colonise your garden pond over it’s first year and you will get that more natural look - free from invasive species!

Fish:
Ideally, you would not add fish to your wildlife pond as they may well eat all the wildlife that comes to your garden!

I must admit that fish tend to be the reason many people get ponds in the first place, and certain species are better than others, but best leave your new pond to the wild animals if that’s what you and your family want to see.

Humans:
Get a color chart of common garden insects and invertebrates so that you and your kids can easily identify anything that they see.

No need for great big books on the subject - just a page or 2 of the most common creatures. There is nothing better to get a kids imagination going than actually being able to know what things are easily. Things aren’t fun if you can’t get them right time and time again - make sure you brush up on it too so that you can encourage them further.

If they see something in the pond and you can tell them what it is straight away - they will learn about them easily and build on this knowledge. You could even learn a few things yourself!!!

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