A natural garden and looking to nature will provide inspiration and a template to follow. Work with the characteristics of your garden, not against them.More popular now than ever, native plants are tough, easy to grow and provide food and valuable habitats for wildlife. Ideal for a more relaxed design, they will also help to preserve our threatened plant heritage.

From the Healthyliving.lk we are going to enhance your knowledge on how to create an Eco-Friendly garden in your home garden to feel the beauty of your soul in a green manner. In this post we are trying share the more experiences with you! 

Recycle, Reuse Materials and Reduce the Pollution

The main concern is the origin, extraction, manufacture and installation of materials in structures, paths, walls and patios. Using recycled materials instead is a great way to go green. As reclamation yards, especially those in cities, can be expensive, trawl through out-of-town yards and junk shops for materials. They also enable you to amplify your home’s identity and its design style further. Old hand-made bricks from reclamation yards work perfectly with a Victorian terraced house, for example.‘New’ materials such as paving made from recycled concrete aggregate are now widely available, so is recycled plastic decking that is moulded to look like real wood.A perfect garden wall or a protective line for a huge tree in your tree can be nicely made out of eco-bricks. An eco-brick is a PET bottle packed solid with clean and dry used plastic.  Eco-bricks are made to a set density to create reusable building blocks that sequester plastic.  Eco-bricks terminally reduce the net surface area of packed plastic to effectively secure it from degrading into toxins and micro-plastics and put plastic on safe and secure thousand year journey out of industry and out of the biosphere.Many companies now sell pots, fencing and furniture made from recycled wood and plastic. 

Choose Eco Materials

That the green materials sourced and made by the local community feature strongly in sustainable gardensas we discussed about the eco bricks in the above topic. Choosing them helps to reduce your carbon footprint as they have few air miles attached, plus most of them use little or no cement, the production of which accounts for more than five per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. They also give gardens a ‘sense of place’ by linking them to the local surroundings, which is especially important in rural settings. Materials such as cob (clay and straw), oak, rammed earth, log walls, woven willow, chestnut paling timber and even straw bales are full of character. You will need to consider cost versus durability more keenly than usual, but the suppliers and craftsmen will be able to advise you.

What works best visually depends on where you live and what you can obtain easily, so find out what is available in your area. Bear in mind that while raw materials are cheaper, labour costs won’t be – traditional materials need specialist skills that are passed down over generations.

Using the Local Materials

Choose materials and features, such as paving and pergolas, which have been sourced or built locally, as this will help, reduce a garden’s carbon footprint and support nearby businesses. There are some beautiful priceless handicrafts in rural villages and if we can buy them, it is a big opportunity to promote them and to trending the gesture of Buy Local theme. Encourage your children to appreciate the local stuff rather than influence them to buy foreign made items.

Use Permeable Paving

Water run-off from concrete-covered gardens in towns and cities causes localized flooding and affects wildlife significantly. To tackle this problem, legislation has been introduced to regulate the use of solid surfaces in front gardens. You must now use permeable surfacing materials. If you plan to build a driveway larger than 5m² with impermeable materials like slated stone you’ll just need the common sense of the altitude of the ground of yours. Unless you can check the water staging area and it’s designed to drain into a lawn or flowerbed, which isn’t always possible.Crunchy gravel and slate chippings are the obvious permeable alternative to solid paving, but there are lots of other materials available – from porous asphalt and block paving to grass reinforced with recycled plastic grids. Driveways need a substantial sub-base, usually with a proper edge, and special permeable materials must be laid carefully to work effectively.          

Natural Home Made Remedies for the Controlling of P&D

You can employ plenty of natural methods to combat pests in your garden. Cultivating of marigold Tagetespatula can control the nematodes attacks in the field. You can easily knock the mealy bugs Phenacoccus spp. off plants by using a strong jet of water. Most of the farmers in villages use raw paddy husk to control the snails & slugs effectively. Pick young caterpillars off – hand picking is a very good practice to control the caterpillars in home gardening scale. Some elders in some villages use garlic, neem and rhubarb leaf sprays to control garden pests. The Bordeaux mixture as well as the neem seed extraction is a very good controlling remedy for the controlling of pests and diseases. 

Invest an Eco or Green Roof

Eco roofs are becoming increasingly popular as they help increase biodiversity, provide good insulation, improve air quality and control water run-off – they’re also very attractive. There are plenty of products available using different construction techniques – you can even retrofit an existing shed and garage if they are able to take the weight. Also a good option to reduce the heat or the air temperature increase of your home is to start over the roof top gardening. It is good tip for the limited space garden owners to increase their plant population. 

Select Eco-Friendly Trees to Improve the Bio-diversity

Choosing the best plants is an important design tool, especially if you're looking to create a wonderful garden on your eyes front. In an eco-friendly garden, the best plants will provide food and shelter, creating perfect habitats for beneficial wildlife. Choose lots of local berry-producing plants and trees, such as hawthorn, which might be growing nearby – birds and insects, will already be used to them, so they’ll visit your garden more frequently if you grow them.

Hedges are certainly better than walls as they’re ideal nesting sites and offer protection from predators. At the very least you should grow plenty of climbers – ivy is particularly good, providing both protection and a rich source of nectar in autumn/winter when there’s little food around. Even nectar-rich, open-faced flowers will make a difference. These are preferable to modern double flowers that don’t have proper nectaries to feed garden-friendly insects. For example, in damp shade, embrace woodland plants and those that grows on woodland margins. For sunny slopes, consider herbs – plants with silvery or blue-grey leaves that have naturally adapted to such conditions. Waterlogged soil? Choose wetland plants – not only will your planting visually sit more comfortably, but also promote happy, healthy plants and suffer fewer pests and diseases.

The key principle to planting is always putting them where they’re happiest. Contented plants take care of themselves, but stressed ones need constant feeding and watering, so make sure you don’t plant your sun-lovers in the shade, for example, or vice versa. Matching the right plant to the right place will also help keep garden maintenance time to a minimum.

Encouraging wildlife makes your garden far more entertaining, as well as helping with pest control – slug-eating hedgehogs and slow-worms love piles of leaves and logs. To attract birds that help with caterpillar control, erect nest boxes and put out a variety of food. 

Enrich Your Soil in Timely

Lots of compost and/or well-rotted manure will keep your soil in what gardeners call ‘good heart’. This creates a healthy soil teeming with essential micro-organisms, which in turn gives you healthy plants that don’t succumb to pests and diseases. Compost soaks up water like a sponge, too – useful in free-draining sandy soils.

Dig in a large bucketful every few feet when planting, or spread liberally around plants as a mulch each spring; this also helps stop light soils from being washed away in heavy rain. The soil rehabilitation is a must in your eco-friendly garden to improve blooms and your harvest. Adding the properly prepared bio char is a good alternative for a life time improved soil structure in your little garden.