A good gardening project involves nurturing new and growing life. Lovingly maintaining plant life and creature habitats that already have a presence is vital too.
Landscaping the garden space is an area of work that can, potentially and temporarily, jeopardise everything your garden stands for. Many people want to make their gardens more sustainable but fail to understand how important landscaping can be to these aims.
Of course, it’s not just the end result that matters. Every detail of this planned project needs to speak to your wider goals around sustainability.
So, how can you successfully design a biodiverse and sustainable landscape project for your garden? You’ll find a few pointers below.
Work with Eco-Friendly Suppliers
Your landscape project can’t be sustainable if you’re activities are facilitating the efforts of businesses that damage the environment. These proceedings can also cause a bitter irony, which can taint your project forever.
Everything you need can be found online. Hanson is an aggregates supplier working hard to reduce its emissions, having done so by 50% since 1990. It is eco-conscious and capable of supplying aggregates for various construction uses, including ready-mixed concrete and asphalt production . Aggregates are perfect for your landscape project if you design things like garden paths.
The right suppliers can elevate what you’re trying to achieve and uphold your dearest principles. That understanding can empower you to further action. Your concerns may begin with finding an eco-friendly aggregates contractor, but who knows what other measures and solutions they’ll introduce you to? In the end, it’s all an education.
Match Local Ecology
Many people love to get wildly creative with their gardens. While people should do what they like with their property, too much freedom can compromise efforts to be sustainable in really profound ways.
The landscaping project needs to ensure that the garden is part of the local ecology and caters to native species. The more it blends into the landscape around and conserves the local biodiversity, the better. Planting the same trees and flowers will let creatures around know they’re invited to take shade and shelter in your garden. Utilise local soil and keep the local climate in mind, too.
It’s worth re-evaluating how important these developments are. After all, UK wildlife is not at its best, with 1 in 4 bird species under serious threat today. Your garden is more than something for just you and your family to enjoy; it’s also home to many other creatures that depend on a more sustainable design from you. Nectar plants attract pollinators which are essential to local produce from fruit trees, and native plants that attract birds and beneficial insects are vital.
The UK’s complex ecosystems recycle water, waste, and energy. It also has a natural lifecycle with seasonal changes. While going against that grain can be interesting in terms of style and theme, it won’t help you to design a biodiverse and sustainable landscape project.
Spending extra money on water and chemicals for your landscape project may detract from your efforts toward sustainability. Your project should be as resourceful as possible with what’s available nearby.
Design Microclimates
Many people embark on their landscape projects with one overarching idea in mind. In the interests of promoting biodiversity and sustainability, it can be better to break up your project into a series of interconnected ideas.
Microclimates are an effective example of this and help you landscape a rich and diverse garden. After all, matching the local ecology can seem like an uninspired choice from a design perspective, so it can be important to be creative within those parameters.
Promising ways to design micro-climates in your landscaping project include:
- Install ponds to bring new types of life to your garden.
- Utilising natural shade from fences, shrubs, or trees to nurture different types of plant life that don’t benefit from sun exposure. Plan by how shade changes throughout the day.
- Surround garden plants with filled water bottles that absorb heat during the day.
- Develop custom windbreaks to protect more fragile flowers from strong gusts of wind. If they’re living windbreaks, such as shrubs, then that’s better.
By designing microclimates, you can create different areas of your garden that promote biodiversity. It can certainly help your landscaping project appear more diverse and intriguing.
Stay Informed on Costs
Landscaping projects can be a big undertaking whether they’re focused on sustainability or not. It’s important not to worry unnecessarily about costs, as those fears may prevent you from making crucial design decisions.
Designing a sustainable landscape project for a garden can be more affordable in many ways. After all, one doesn’t need to buy grass seeds, water, pesticides, or fertilisers. Where possible, designers will be planning to use the natural resources that are around them already.
Reclaiming and repurposing items can keep costs down as well. Jam jars can be used as pots, and with enough of them, they can be spread over the garden area to create more layers and levels.
To design a successful biodiverse and sustainable landscape project, you need to believe what you’re doing is possible. In other circles, sustainability is an ‘extra effort’, but the puzzle pieces can come together quite naturally in landscaping and gardening.
