Keeping as much of the space around your home as a garden is a great way to help the planet. If done right, gardens can provide wildlife with a home and play a role in cleansing the air. Here are a few suggestions to help you to take things a step further. Things you can do to make your current garden even more eco-friendly.
Switch to outdoor LED lighting
If you are not yet using LED lighting in your garden, consider gradually switching to doing so. Potentially you could reduce the amount of electricity that you use by as much as 90%. How much varies from garden to garden, but the savings are usually significant. Using less electricity is good for your pocket as well as for the planet. As you can see, quality LED lighting for furniture and other types of outdoor LED light fixtures are not that expensive to buy. In many cases, the cost of them will be covered by the amount of money you save on your electricity bill.
If you want to know exactly how much electricity you will save, use this free electricity consumption calculator to help you to do so. Find out what the wattage of your existing lighting is and add them to the calculator using the “add an appliance button”. Make a note of the results, then add details of the new lighting you are considering buying to see how much that will consume. The difference between the two is how much less electricity your home will be burning. You can also use the per kWh cost figure from your electricity bill to work out the difference in terms of cost.
Buy second-hand garden furniture
When it is time to replace or upgrade your garden furniture try to find something second hand. Or consider doing up something that you already own. It is surprising how much better your old bench will look if you strip it back to the wood and use a natural stain on it (see here).
Create a compost heap
Currently, in most countries, the majority of food waste ends up in landfills. Once there, it just rots away and very little of the resulting nutrients find their way back into the topsoil. If you create a compost heap you reduce the amount of land that is given over to landfills and potentially all of the nutrients go back into, and benefit, the earth.
Change the way you manage your flower beds
We all want our gardens to look as colourful as possible, which is why we are happy to spend quite a bit of time and money creating and maintaining flower beds. Unfortunately, if we do not do that in the right way, we could potentially be damaging the environment more than we are helping it. But don´t worry too much it is possible to grow flowers in your garden in a sustainable way. This article explains what you need to do to achieve that goal.
None of the above changes is difficult to achieve, or that expensive. But it is best not to try to make them all at once. Instead, choose one change to make per week or month. In no time at all, you will have created a garden that is truly good for the planet.
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