Eco Gardening – 9 Simple Steps

I don’t know about you, but my heart slightly lurches when I hear the phrase ‘eco gardening’. I know I should be doing more to live (and garden) sustainably, but with so much talk about net zero, I feel a bit overwhelmed with information. It’s hard to wade through it all to know what will actually make a difference.

But on the basis that doing something is better than nothing, I thought I’d find 9 simple but significant things we could perhaps all do, and gauge the difference they could make. Here’s what I’ve found.

9 Eco Gardening Tips

• Avoid digging
• Go peat free
• Plant a tree
• Make 1m matter
• Encourage insects
• Put in a pond
• Grow your own flowers
• Collect and use rainwater
• Mulch

Avoid Digging

Unless I’m creating a brand new flower bed from a previously uncultivated spot I don’t tend to dig. And it seems my laziness is a good thing! Digging the soil is bad for the planet. Our soils hold huge amounts of carbon dioxide. By digging we actually release the trapped CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

So if you want to pep up your soil, and sort out your weeds instead mulch (more of that later) and if you must weed, do it by hand.

Go Peat Free

Perhaps the most obvious eco gardening tip is to use peat free compost. There are loads of reasons for this. Firstly, our peatlands are home to a diverse range of plant and animal species and store more carbon than all of the world’s forests combined. So just as we don’t want to cut down the forests, we don’t want to dig up the peat bogs.

Peat moss is also ever so slow growing. I didn’t realise, but it takes a year to grow about 1 mm! So when companies dig it up for use in composts, it’s not going to bounce back any time soon. Added to all this, the act of extracting the peat releases the CO2 stores back into the atmosphere. This adds to climate change. In fact I’ve read the bogs of the UK and Ireland are so damaged they’re releasing more carbon than they’re capturing!

We clearly need to stop using any composts with peat in them. So our first simple eco gardening step is if a bag of compost doesn’t emphatically say ‘peat free’ on it we shouldn’t buy it. And we shouldn’t be fooled by words such as ‘organic’, ‘sustainable’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ on the bags. None of this means peat free.

Plant a Tree

We’ve all been told that trees are important and instincively believe this. But what are the numbers to back it up? Well, apparently the Earth’s forests and soil absorb about 30 percent of carbon emissions that are in the air. But about 18 million acres of forest are lost every year. In fact people have cleared roughly half of the world’s tropical forests.

This makes it all sound pretty hopeless, but taking measures to redress this can make a difference. I’ve read that over the past 15 years China has planted millions of trees creating masses of of new forest cover. Since 2012 this has apparently offset 33% of China’s annual fossil fuel emissions. That’s huge!

So surely a great eco gardening step is to plant a tree. There are 30 million gardeners in the UK and as many of my readers are Stateside, I’ve researched and found out that 55% of US households do some form of gardening activity. Surely if we all made a concerted effort to plant a tree or persuaded our local councils, a company or school to do so, that could be a massive impact. I appreciate that not all of us have the space in our gardens. But in my guide to choosing a tree for your garden you’ll fine there are trees for every plot size, even tiny patios.

Eco Gardening – Make 1m Matter

I’ve always felt that garden soil and perennial plants are brilliant. But I didn’t realise that brilliance extended to storing carbon!

So why not encourage everyone you know to say pull up one paving slab and plant up the released space? Or if your patio is concrete and you can’t pull anything up, create a couple of large planters. Fill them with garden soil or peat-free compost (of course) and perennial plants. For inspiration, here are seven patio pot planting ideas using perennials.

If we gardeners in the UK planted 1m² in this way it could make a big difference. Depending on what we planted, the RHS says it would be equivalent to heating a whopping 86,000 homes for a year – and could be as many as 1 million! And that’s ignoring all the lovely extra butterflies, bees and other insects you’d have in your garden too.

If you want to do more than 1m, you could of course go completely mad and release most of that patio to wild, wonderful perennial plants. I did this a few years ago and have to say I haven’t looked back. The insects, birds and creatures now routinely visiting my patio area is breathtaking. It’s easily one of my favourite parts of the garden.

Eco Gardening To Encourage Insects

This brings me neatly onto one of the easiest eco gardening things we can all do. Think about insects. I’ve written before about plants which attract butterflies. When you look at the variety of gorgeous plants out there which do the job, you quickly realise it’s no hardship gardening with them in mind!

Similarly, there’s no compromise on plant choice, colour, shape or height when we garden in a bee friendly way. So let’s all do this.

Put In A Pond

We know that ponds are good for encouraging a greater mix of creatures into our gardens. But apparently they store carbon too! A study has found that the lovely, murky old sediment which collects at the bottom of ponds, has the potential to hold more carbon per square metre per year, than equivalent areas of grassland and woodland! This is obviously giving me a license to not clean out my pond – hurrah! But it also means that even a modest pond could make a real difference to carbon capture.

Grow Your Own Flowers

Here in the UK we spend almost £2 billion each year on cut flowers mostly for our own homes. We’re not alone in doing this. Around the world, the global market for cut flowers is expected to reach almost $44 billion by 2027. I can understand why. After all flowers in the home really lift the spirits. Who doesn’t love receiving a romatic bunch of flowers.

However, the vast bulk of the flowers we buy here in the UK are shipped in from abroad – mostly the Netherlands. Getting those fresh flowers to our homes requires intensive growing in greenhouses, chilled air freight, or cargo boats, pesticides, water, lots of plastic wrap etc. To keep them fresh throughout this process requires refrigeration capabilities at every step of the way – on farms, lorries, planes, and boats.

The CO2 and environmental impacts of all this is not sustainable. Lots of us are becoming more aware of this as more sustainable florists for instance are trying to use seasonal UK-grown flowers as much as possible. But we can equally do our bit by growing our own cut flowers.

I tried to do this last year. And I freely admit I was really hit and miss in terms of how my vases looked.

I definitely found it really difficult finding much of interest in my garden once we got to October. I’m not the world’s best flower arranger, which doesn’t help! But I’m determined to try to only have home grown flowers in my home. And if I’m going to give some flowers, I’ll try to give a posy from my garden.

If I must buy them, I’ll buy locally grown blooms. The flowers will inevitably be seasonal. But surely we’ve got to wean ourselves off our addiction for having say roses for Valentine’s day.

If we do, we can really make a difference. For instance, the carbon footprint of imported flowers can be 10 times that of a non-imported bouquet, according to a Lancaster University study. Better still, growing our own blooms could save almost 8kg of carbon per bunch!

Collect and Use Rainwater

In a rainy place like the UK it’s easy to underestimate the environmental impact of watering the garden with tap water. But when I think about it, it’s an immense waste of energy using mains water which has been intensively treated so it is fit to drink to water our plants.

It makes much more environmental sense to use rainwater. That’s why in 2023 I’m going to install a water butt and collect much more rainwater.

Mulch

Again, I appreciate we don’t all have room for a water butt. If this is the case, another mains water-saving (and therefore carbon reducing) tip is to mulch. Adding mulch to the garden massively improves the amount of water your garden soil actually can hold. This in turn reduces the amount of tap water you need to use during dry weather.

Woodchip or bark are particularly good for water retention. Both soak up lots of water when it rains and hold the moisture once saturated. Then when it’s really hot, these mulches pass the moisture through to soak the soil underneath.

Eco Gardening – What Next?

Re-reading this list, I don’t think it sounds too onerous, do you? Indeed, I’m going to make a real effort to implement all 9 of the suggestions this year.

Of course, if you’ve further eco gardening tips for me, do share…Meanwhile, I’m going to review the range of eco gardening products that are out there. To see what else we can all be doing. Once I’ve done this, I’ll let you know what I’ve discovered. Happy eco gardening x