14 Sustainable Garden Ideas: Eco-Friendly Garden Tips

Gardening is all about helping plants and nature thrive, which is why sustainable gardening practices are important. By changing your garden habits your garden will thrive, you will reduce your waste and help promote local biodiversity. It’s also a great way to do your bit for the planet!

To help you get started or continue your sustainability journey, we have created this guide of the top 14 ways you can make your garden more eco-friendly. From composting and solar energy products to plant recommendations and natural pest control. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, these tips will help you make a positive difference.

Make your own compost

Composting is an easy and effective way to not only reduce your waste but to create rich soil for your plants.

The best part is composting is simple and easy. All you need is a compost bin, big or small, and your regular organic waste. Instead of placing your organic waste into your regular bin, where it will be sent to a landfill, you put it in your composting bin. In there, your coffee grounds, grass clippings and even fruit and vegetable scraps will break down and create your own natural compost.

The result is compost you can use at any time, without the cost and environmental impact. Just make sure you balance out the nitrogen rich ‘green’ waste, like food scraps, with the carbon rich ‘brown’ waste, such as leaves, to help your compost break down as best as possible.

Change up your lawn

While a freshly trimmed lawn is a garden staple, it is one of the most unsustainable features of modern gardens. Mowing your lawn regularly negatively affects pollinators and wildlife. And maintaining the rich green colour we associate with beautiful lawns typically requires large quantities of water.

This doesn’t mean you need to get rid of your lawn entirely. In fact, there are various ways you can make your lawn more eco-friendly.

One way you can make a positive impact is by simply letting the grass grow. This provides more pollen for pollinators and more habitat for wildlife. With longer grass you’ll find more bees and butterflies fluttering about your garden. Another way you can change up your lawn is by pulling up any paving slabs you have to create more lawn space.

If you’re not keen on the idea of long wild grass in your garden, clover is an excellent option. Not only is it short and vibrant, it is drought-resistant, needs little care and adds plenty of nitrogen back into the soil.

Plant for pollinators

Pollinators are a vital part of our food production cycles. Without them, we wouldn’t have the abundant food we take for granted. Despite this, we are destroying their habitats and removing their food sources through our treatment of nature.

To help provide habitats and a food source for these important creatures, plant with pollinators in mind. Make sure you have a variety of plants in your garden, and that they bloom at different times throughout the year as well as each season. This provides pollinators with a near constant food source. It’s also important to avoid pesticides as these can harm our pollinator friends.

If you’re stuck on ideas, we recommend a mixture of wildflowers as well as plants like lavender and sunflowers - these plants are loved by a wide range of pollinators.

Filter pollution with plants

If you live in an urban area, you know how much city pollution affects air quality. Luckily, purposeful planting can help improve the situation in both the air and soil.

Ferns, ivy and spider plants are examples of plants that effectively absorb toxins like formaldehyde and benzene, found both indoors and outdoors. Bamboo and moss are also great choices for an urban garden. Incorporating such plants in your garden is an excellent way to help filter pollution.

While it may seem fruitless to try to tackle pollution at such a small scale, it’s important to remember the impact of community efforts. If everyone in the community plants with pollution in mind, it can have a great impact.

Plant trees

When choosing plants for the garden, it’s easy to overlook trees. They take ages to grow into their full size and often aren’t as pretty as vibrant shrubs or flowers until they’ve reached maturity. But planting trees is one of the most impactful ways you can make your garden more eco-friendly.

Trees are great for various reasons. The most well known is their ability to act as a carbon sink. Because trees use CO2 to respire, they help absorb the excess CO2 we currently have in our atmosphere and therefore help improve air quality. They also provide shelter and habitats for wildlife like squirrels and birds. Plus, when the summer heat hits, they provide vital shade for both your home and garden, helping you cut down on air conditioning costs.

When choosing a tree, make sure to pick one that is native to your area. We recommend choosing a fruit tree like an apple or wild cherry tree. These are easy to grow and have the added benefit of home grown fruit once mature.

Eat what you grow

Having a sustainable garden isn’t just about what you do, it’s also about what you grow. Growing your own fruits and vegetables not only provides you with fresh, healthy produce at a low cost, it also cuts down your carbon footprint from store-bought food.

Growing your own fruits and vegetables can seem intimidating if you haven’t grown your own produce before, so start small. Growing herbs on your kitchen windowsill is an excellent way to start. Herbs like basil are easy to grow and maintain, plus they can also be used to make staples like pesto at home.

When you’re ready to branch out into your garden, choose easy to grow vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce or carrots. These require minimal care and aren’t too sensitive to changes in the climate, making them perfect for first time growers.

Use natural pest control

There is nothing worse than slugs munching away at your home grown lettuce, but pests are a natural part of gardening. When searching for solutions, chemical pesticides are often suggested but these are both harmful to the environment and to your health.

To keep your garden eco-friendly, use natural pest control methods instead. Introducing ladybirds into your garden is one way to tackle aphids which can weaken and even kill your plants. As ladybirds prey on aphids, having more in your garden is likely to reduce their numbers. Another natural pest control method is planting more garlic and basil, both of which have natural bug repelling properties. You can even make your own organic sprays using soapy water.

If you’re looking to combine your love of wildlife with pest control, encouraging birds and frogs into your garden by providing birdhouses, bird baths and small ponds will also help.

Avoid plastic products

It is a well known fact that plastic is bad for the environment. It takes centuries to decompose and can release microplastics into food and water chains. Even if we recycle the plastic we use, it can only be recycled a limited amount of times before it ends up in landfills.

Despite this fact, it can be difficult to avoid plastic, especially when shopping on a budget. But, knowing what to look for can help you better avoid plastic in your garden.

Instead of plastic planters or tools, choose sustainable materials like metal, wood or biodegradable products. It’s also important to choose plastic-free options for things like composting bags, garden tarps and watering cans. If you’re working with a strict budget, it can be cheaper to buy products like composting bags in bulk, or to buy tools secondhand.

Reduce water use

Reducing your water usage is important when gardening sustainably, especially as we are likely to see water resources become more limited due to changes brought on by climate change. But with our plants needing water to survive, it can be difficult to see how to reduce water usage.

One way to reduce the amount of water used in your garden is to add plants that don’t require a lot of water. Poppies, rosemary, sage and calliopsis are examples of plants that thrive without much hydration. Another idea is adding mulch to the garden beds to retain moisture and prevent evaporation. Watering your garden early in the morning or late at night will also help reduce water loss and evaporation from soil.

Collect rainwater

Collecting rainwater not only provides your garden with a natural source of water, it reduces your tap water consumption and reduces your water bill. Rainwater is also often better for plants since it doesn’t contain the chlorine and fluoride found in tap water.

Add a rain barrel to your garden or a rainwater collection system to your roof to capture as much rainwater as possible. Make sure to use clean containers and keep them covered to prevent any pests from breeding in the water you collect.

Encourage wildlife

Supporting biodiversity in your garden is an important way to make your garden eco-friendly. Providing shelter, food and water sources for animals and insects helps their populations grow, and in return they can offer pest control.

We recommend installing shelters for bees, birds and hedgehogs such as birdhouses and bee hotels. Ponds provide a habitat for frogs as well as a water supply for animals to drink from.

If you’re encouraging wildlife, it is important that you don’t use pesticides in your garden as these can cause the animals harm.

Use hedges instead of fencing

Swapping out your traditional fencing with hedges or shrubs is also a great way to make your garden eco-friendly.

Not only do they still provide privacy and wind protection, they promote biodiversity by providing food and shelter for small birds, mammals and insects. Additionally, hedges and shrubs are a great way to provide more pollination opportunities for insects like bees.

If you want to swap without leaving your garden too exposed, fast-growing, dense plants like boxwood are great options. Hedgerows are also amazing natural sound barriers for added privacy.

Avoid electric products

We are used to using electric tools like lawnmowers, leaf blowers and hedge trimmers to make the maintenance of our gardens easier. But these tools contribute to noise pollution and consume vital energy.

One way you can reduce your usage of electric products is by embracing a natural garden. Allow the grass to grow and leaves to decompose to help pollinators, insects and to improve the quality of your garden’s soil.

For jobs like leaf blowing or desired garden clean up, opt for manual tools like hand clippers and garden rakes. These tools also help you be more precise, preventing any accidents or injury.

Recycle in your garden

Repurposing and recycling in your garden is an excellent way to liven up your space and reduce your waste.

There are many items you can recycle in your garden. Take old tin cans and plastic bottles and transform them into garden planters. If you have any discarded wood or bricks, use these to create a raised flower bed or pathways. Old branches, leaves and twigs can also be collected and repurposed as mulching or used in composting.