The Green Guide: Tip No.4 – Greener Gardening

Tips and tricks for making environmentally friendly swaps today!

There are small signs here and there that spring is on its way – a perfect time to start getting back in your garden and create a beautiful haven for yourself. But what if you also made your space work for wildlife and the environment?

We hear all the time about the way our environments and ecosystems are being degraded, destroyed and urbanised on Earth. But as individuals we have a huge power to create thriving places of nature within our gardens. We cannot always have power over government decisions, but we have control over what we do with our own piece of Earth within our own patch. Imagine if everyone in the country created gardens for wildlife as well as ourselves – we could create a huge interconnected national park, without even leaving our homes. Even if you don’t have a garden or do not own your local green space, there is so much you can do to maximise your space to work for nature. If you are unsure about how to create a more sustainable garden, have a look at these following tips and check out other information online and in books specially on the subject to help you out.

• Firstly, to really make our gardens a great place for nature, we need to rewild them. Rewilding is the process of nature restoring its natural balance without much human interference in order to establish a stable ecosystem. So to do this, you are going to have to let go of that perfect idea of a garden: neat mown lawns, paved areas, manmade driveways full of impermeable surfaces and complete control, as this does very little for nature and is difficult to maintain. Start by seeing what your garden tends to naturally do, and try embracing it, maybe in small areas at first. You could still keep a few manicured elements if you really love them, like a mown lawn, but leave a corner of the garden to grow wild. Try to look at each level of your garden ecosystem and implement some degree of rewilding, from the soil to the ground layer, understorey, shrubs, canopy and climbing layer, to create a full and rich wild landscape. Ideas include:

1. Leaving wildlife corners of your garden, with piles of natural materials e.g. sticks, branches, off-cuttings from gardening, logs, leaves…………………………………………………………….
2. Creating a pond – water is essential to wildlife, so if you’re up for the project, create a wildlife-friendly pond in one part of your garden. Small space? Create a mini pond or add a bird bath or small water source for animals to use. Fancy a go? Check out this guide to designing and building a wildlife pond How to build a pond | The Wildlife Trusts
3. Let plants grow where they are and to the size they want, as in time all the species will establish a balance between them which will eventually stabilize.
4. Leaving some/all of your lawn to not be maintained by a lawn mower and encourage a range of species including wildflowers to increase biodiversity.
5. Creating a dead hedge as a boundary instead of a traditional wall or fence (See Dead hedge (forestgarden.wales) for ideas)
6. Create a green/living roof on any outdoor buildings such as sheds to increase plant cover and habitats.

• Choose Peat-free compost for gardening and growing – peat extracted for compost degrades finite and ancient ecosystems and releases lots of CO₂ into the atmosphere that was once locked away. Choose peat-free composts when shopping or use your own homemade compost from garden and kitchen waste.
• Species specific changes – a small word here on some of the things you can specifically do for native species found in UK gardens:

1. Create gaps in hedges and holes in fences so hedgehogs can pass through as they roam around from garden to garden at night
2. Put up bird boxes or plant trees with good nesting sites for small birds, such as finches, and put up hides for other organisms such as mammals, frogs and toads
3. Put up bat boxes on walls for a variety of bat species
4. Make and put up bug hotels for insects to live in and as a food source for birds and mammals
5. Create warm covered areas for reptiles like slowworms to hide

• Weeds – as the saying goes, weeds are just plants in the wrong place. Many of the plants we consider weeds are in fact native plants and wildflowers that are beneficial to wildlife. The best thing you can do is change your mindset and embrace weeds, incorporating them into your garden design. If you really don’t want to do that, please do not use chemicals, as herbicides and pesticides of any kind will only have negative consequences for wildlife as the chemicals rarely impact only one species without effecting any others. Instead, remove the weeds and plant them together in pots/containers or elsewhere in the garden so you can create a wild area as well as a designed area.

• Small spaces – if you have a balcony, you can still make space for wildlife. Research some plants that would accommodate your space, such as dwarf varieties of trees or plants that grow well in vertical or hanging planting schemes. No garden or balcony? You are still not off the hook! It you have a window ledge then you can create a great window box with wildflowers and herbs to attract bees, butterflies and other insects who urgently need our help right now.
• Native species – when choosing the plants in your wildlife garden try to choose native species to your location. Local wildlife are familiar with these species and are more likely to use them as a habitat than unfamiliar non-native species, which can spread at the expense of native wildlife. Check out your local native species on local wildlife or gardening websites ( try Specify Your Location – Native Plants Finder (nwf.org) if you are in the USA, Trees and shrubs: native to Britain / RHS Gardening and 20 Native Wildflowers to Grow – BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine in the UK and Invasive Non-Native Species – The RSPB to identify problematic invasive non-native species which may appear in your garden) or contact your local nature group for more information on species specific to your local area.
• Grow your own food – growing fruits and vegetables can be really fun, delicious and reduce your food’s air miles and waste packaging. To ensure you garden in harmony with wildlife, use natural methods of pest deterents rather than chemicals, do not use netting to protect crops which wildlife may get stuck in and use companion gardening to create natural habitats in growing beds. If you grow in a kind way where you accept that your crops may not look exactly like the ones in the supermarket and one or two may have to be sacrificed to wild creatures, then you will feel comfortable gardening with wildlife instead of battling against it.

I am not a gardener, and this is not expert advice, just some tips to get you started. If you have a space you can rewild and let wildlife into, I would recommend doing some further reading to help you get started, such as:

1. Rewild Your Garden by Francis Tophill (Rewild Your Garden by Frances Tophill | Waterstones) – I was given this book myself and it has been a great help for me in understanding more about how to rewild each part of a garden and the various layers it can be done in. Also, it is beautifully illustrated, so if like me you like to read books that are pretty, this is a lovely guide.
2. Check out other wildlife gardening books here Natural & wild gardening books | Waterstones, such as Wildlife Gardening by Kate Bradbury, great for learning from, sharing with friends and having on your coffee table.
3. Websites such as: The Wildlife Trusts (Wildlife Gardening | The Wildlife Trusts), RSPB (Gardening For Wildlife – The RSPB) and The Middle-Sized Garden (How to create an easy sustainable garden – The Middle-Sized Garden | Gardening Blog) to name a few.

In your sustainable journey, creating an environmentally friendly garden is one of the most exciting, creative and impactful things you can do. It is your piece of land to do what you want with it; your chance to fight climate change, live with rather than without nature and create a stable and blossoming ecosystem. Create a garden that you want to spend time in, but also maximise what you have to help wildlife and nature to restore itself now and in the future. This is your decision, and your chance to make your own changes for nature. Take it!