SUSTAINABLE GARDENING PRACTICES:
There are many definitions of sustainable gardening, and through my decades as a sustainable gardener, I’ve summed it up to mean…wait for it…a garden that sustains itself and the life within! By that I mean, doing less, so much less, that it can take away the stress and much of the labor, bringing back the joy of gardening and bettering the environment.
Sustainable gardening is the concept of using gardening practices that cause no harm to the Earth and its inhabitants while working in a way to enhance it. But there is more. To me, sustainable gardening is to have all the aspects of sustaining life. For example, having a butterfly garden is not enough to just have pretty nectar-rich flowers. For a butterfly garden to be fully sustainable, plants must sustain all aspects of the butterfly’s life cycle. That means providing host plants, specific plants that area butterflies need to lay their eggs. So yes, you will have holes in your leaves; that’s the goal!
Simply put, sustainable gardening is designing your garden to sustain itself and allows us to secure our future to make the Earth better than we found it. Think of it as organic gardening taken a step further.
Design becomes important for a garden to sustain itself and provide the plants necessary to sustain wildlife fully in all respects of its lifecycle. You could just plant plants that are regionally native and provide exactly what nature does. No supplemental water, cutbacks, added mulch, pesticides, or herbicides. Yet, many want more from their gardens, so we add plant diversity. What is key is the placement of these plants.
SOIL
FERTILIZING SUSTAINABLY
WATERING SUSTAINABLY
WATERWISE
Helen Yoest