People ask themselves: What is Green gardening exactly? Many tend to get curious since it is a relatively new term that has begun to pop up since the green movement advent. Gardeners, since then, whether big or small, have started adopting some of the properties that match what eco green living means.
Gardening practices significantly affect the environment. If these practices are not planned correctly, even small gardens can create fertilizer pollution issues and erosion. Moreover, the use of pesticides can harm the soil, water, and the plants themselves. With Green gardening, you can minimize the blow by maintaining an eco-friendly garden. This way, you can keep things simple by reducing disturbance to the environment. Here are some things you need to know that will answer the question: what is green gardening?
Points to Remember: What is Green Gardening?
People often use the key terms “eco-friendly,” “green,” and “sustainable when it comes to Green gardening. However, what exactly does it mean?
Green gardening, also known as sustainable gardening or landscaping, employs techniques that cause minimal impact on the environment. This may be done by using little to no artificial chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, and quick-release fertilizers. There are also other means to reduce these footprints, such as minimizing the use of electric-powered devices for landscape care. Machines such as leaf blowers, lawnmowers, and string trimmers cause not only air pollution but also noise pollution.
Benefits of Green Gardening
Green gardening is not merely planting your seeds by using fewer electrical devices and chemicals. It involves some techniques that you need to know to create that perfect green garden. These techniques have corresponding benefits that you can gain directly from Green gardening. Here are some of the benefits you can get from the practice.
Makes use of the best available resources
You can make the best out of your resources by arranging your garden areas to use the rainwater overflow and utilizing rain barrels in collecting rainwater. To preserve moisture in the soil, you can mulch the bare ground on your own. Finally, you can enrich the soil using grass clippings, composted weeds, kitchen waste, leaves, and other parts of the plants. This way, nothing will go to waste, and everything has a purpose in your garden.
Promote diversity in your landscape
Planting native shrubs and trees, understory perennials, and reducing the size of mowed areas replaces the green space and habitat. This means that green gardening not only adds interest to the landscape but also restores the green space that has been removed for development.
Increases Oxygen and reduces Carbon Dioxide
Huge plant biomass increases the production of photosynthesis—that chemical process wherein plants absorb a significant amount of sunlight and turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar. The byproduct thereafter is the oxygen gas that we inhale.
Offset the heat emitted by roads, urban or suburban buildings and others
Gardens and landscapes with more shrubs, trees, and perennials absorb more stormwater and increase transpiration. This also puts water vapor into the atmosphere, which in turn reduces high temperatures.
Increases wildlife habitat for critters
This sustainable kind of landscape promotes an active ecosystem. Plants, insects, microbes, and all other animals depend on one another. It should stay that way.
Prevent further damage to some infrastructures
Green gardening will prevent you and other people from digging without knowing the location of some underground pipes, utilities, and more. This is why in 2007, Common Ground Alliance launched a nationwide hotline 811, which is also pegged as the “call before you dig” number. Moreover, this program assumes that you will also plan your above-the-ground utilities to prevent causing damage to underground infrastructure.
Preparation for disasters such as fires, droughts and hurricanes
In green gardening, you are expected to design your landscape in such a way that it can minimize or withstand damage when disaster strikes. This is a sustainable method since after the disaster, and you have minimal repairs to do and fewer plants to replace. An example of this strategy is when you leave a 30-foot defensible space around your buildings to keep the fire at bay. You may reduce the cost of recovery if you prune or remove trees that might damage your property when a hurricane occurs.
Tips for Green Gardening Starters
Here are some simple tips you can observe if you are starting on turning your garden green.
- Use less plastic.
Avoid using plastic pots and consider re-using the old ones that you already have. Other alternatives include grass, bamboo, wood pulp and biodegradable paper. - Use less water
How is this even possible? You may either choose drought-tolerant plants, install water butts or by applying mulch to flower beds. - Use wooden hand tools with a sustainable source
Sure, garden hand tools are not precisely single-use items. However, if you want your garden to be 100% plastic-free, then it is best to go for FSG-certified wooden handles.
Conclusion
What is Green gardening? To sum everything up in a sentence, it is a more sustainable and eco-friendly way of maintaining a garden. Additionally, it does benefit not only the environment but also the gardener. It is excellent to follow a movement that deals away with manicured lawns and replace these with functional gardens that can move on its own. Pesticides and artificial chemicals are not indispensable when it comes to gardening. One can always go for the more natural alternative to also help protect the fauna and the flora. Going green will make you enjoy that delicious soup or refreshing salad produced by your beautiful garden even more. Find out more about green gardening.