Garden design that is sustainable & thoughtful : a few thoughts.

In the world of garden and landscape design there seems to be a shift happening. It’s something that has been percolating for many years but suddenly it’s being talked about frequently.  Gently and without evangelism but quite clearly.

It’s about creating gardens that are part of the environment we live in, that have a sense of care for the soil, the bacteria and fungi, the insects and all the ecology that happens in an environment.  Thinking carefully about the plants we are using : plants that work in the environment they are in. Not necessarily always native or endemic plants but ones that work well without needing excess inputs, that thrive and also look beautiful. Last and not least, and of essential importance, thinking carefully about the hard surfaces we utilise and what we are bringing into our gardens that could be toxic.

Now, before you panic and think everyone is going to convince you that your garden needs to be wild, natural, native and full of dubious plants, less romantic and having very little of your personality, I don’t think any of this should be the case.  In fact, I think we are starting to really think about sustainability and ecology as we design and create totally beautiful gardens that will still be pleasing, considered, delightful, full of life, for pleasure and fully enjoyable.  Still keeping all the design and plant elements we love but something that is great for the humans as well as all the natural biome, insects, wildlife and plants. 
I think we have come to the stage though where designing just for beauty is not enough.  We have to consider how we create that beauty and what materials we use to do that.  Rather than blindly following what the landscape supply store sells to us.  

I have been helping people create gardens and designing gardens for more than 30 years now and over the past few years, I’ve had so many people ask me about creating meadows (more blogs on that soon), wilder areas in their gardens, and reusing materials they already have.  I can see the prevalence of this thoughtful gardening increasing and the conversation getting louder both from a residential home owner as well as from landscape practitioners.  Having always wanted to encourage my clients to use non chemical, non invasive, and environmentally friendly materials, this is great to hear.  But at the same time, I’m having to really think, analyse and critique my thinking as I help others create gardens. It’s often a challenge but in a good way and I find myself having to quickly catch up as well to make sure I’m really thinking ecologically about what we use to make our gardens and how we can do it better and just what is the leading science that we can look at to help with this.

So how can we really genuinely do this in our gardens and just how easy is it?.  

There are some quick and obvious ways to can head in the right direction and of course some more complex ones as well.  It’s a learning journey for all of us, and we just have to start and get better and better at it as we go.  It’s better to start & learn more as we go than to wait until we have all the answers. So, maybe let’s just start with an easy 6 things we can do right now. These are the things that the science supports and that I work with my clients on every time we plan, design and create a garden.

1. Use no dig gardening techniques and use as much natural organic local material as possible.   Less disruption to soil structure and thoughtful inputs will keep fungi, bacteria, insects, soil and plants happy and that means increased biodiversity. Utilising and working with all the natural processes and using layering no dig techniques is so much easier than digging!   No dig gardening is a big important building block to healthy gardens, healthy soil and thriving plants.  It’s the secret that generations of gardeners have used to start creating beautiful lush gardens and a heads up, No Dig Gardening is definitely not just for vegetable gardens.  It’s perfect to use for all of our gardens : big, small, town, country, perennial, even adapted for native gardens, and IT WORKS - every time. 

2. Always think about SOIL FIRST. We want to make sure we are nourishing the soil, making it better, using the soil we have insitu to get the best out of it. Not bringing soil in from outside. That way we get more beautiful gardens, better healthier plants and a thriving active natural environment.  Everything about flourishing, thriving, beautiful gardens starts with soil.  Boring as that may sound, it’s a tried and true gardening knowledge secret and one we should all be sharing!

   Good soil = great plants. Good soil = good natural biome. Like fungi (so important for plants!), bacteria and insects, better nutrient availability, & this automatically means healthier plants with more growth and less disease. So less reliance on chemicals (which are so detrimental to the ecology of our gardens) Good soil = better water availability, which in turn means we use less water as we water our gardens.

   Everything leads to everything else and we have better management of our finite resources.

   You can see it is a  circular idea and a circular system and every part of it relies on the next.  Breaking part of the chain changes the success but small changes in thinking and thoughtful use of material suddenly means the circular system works, continues to roll and then expands and a concentric effect happens and we can create gardens that are beautiful and easy to look after and thrive all at the same time! 

3. Don’t bring soil into your garden!  Just don’t!  It’s something I say time and time again. For a few reasons.  It usually means some other area has been devastated, pillaged and the water table there and the animal and bio life there has been ruined.  Soil you buy hasn’t been created by man, it’s been taken from somewhere else.  There are much better ways to ‘create’ soil and the best substrate in your garden for growing plants.  (no dig gardening for example!)

   Soil you bring into your garden often brings diseases, plants you don’t want (commonly known as weeds), a hard and difficult environment for your plants, as well as potentially being water repelling, with no organic matter or nutrition to grow plants in.  Not a great combination when you are trying to grow beautiful plants.
   I also find it’s expensive and on top of bringing in soil, you will need

4. Endeavour to create & establish a garden that doesn’t need a large amount of watering.  This is a hard one but can be doable.  Accomplishing this also depends on an understanding of the relationship of your climate (mainly average rainfall & temperature), soil, mulch, plant selection and a little gardening experience, or getting good advice to achieve it.  Yes it starts to sound a little bit complicated doesn’t it with lots of moving parts, and there is always the push and pull of saying we want lower maintenance gardens vs having plants that require high imputs. In the end, for water control, it essentially means it’s important to invest in a good well thought out automated clever watering system that puts just the right amount of water into your garden areas without waste or runoff but gives your plants the best amount to look fabulous. Thus we can decrease dramatically the water we use while still having a well healthy nourished thriving garden full of plants. The ultimate long term aim may be to try and find ways to really garden well without watering at all. (the ideal! but generally a seriously hard thing to achieve!)

   As you gain gardening experience, you’ll be able to see how to water a garden efficiently and how vital watering is to the gardens ability to thrive - water is often the life giving essence of a garden.  So maybe with this one, there are a combination of factors that we need to undertake. We establish a good watering system not using more water than we need, we actively increase soil health to increase the water holding capacity of the soil, we concentrate on great soil health for plant nutrients,  and we don’t overwater to runoff. (don’t get me started on runoff!)

5. Use really good mulches!  Mulches that will give great useful long term goodness to the soil and to the ecology of the soil..  DON’T USE BARK CHIPS as a mulch.   I know I talk about bark chips often and stand by my opinion that they should never enter your garden for use as a mulch under any circumstances.  They kill soil micobiome, inhibit plant growth, leach tanins into the soil, and draw nitrogen from the soil.  So not a good match to thoughtful gardening or thriving plants.

   On the other had, using really good well made eco-clever mulches add great amounts of organic matter, break down over time to add humus to the soil and don’t bring any chemicals or non natural additives in the soil. They nourish the soil, which in turn increases water and nutrient availability to plants, and thus you get really healthy plants full of lush growth that look amazing.  The garden then get lots of good insects, fungi and bacteria that help plants thrive. (equatable to gut health in humans!)  It’s a long term eco win-win!  This also means that if you are eating the produce you are growing in your garden, then it’s much healthier for you also. (just a thought to consider!)

6. DON’T use chemicals in the garden - in the form of chemical sprays, artificial fertilizers, fertilisers reliant on high doses of phosphorus and potassium, or anything that isn’t natural.   This is challenging I know, especially for a gardening society that have an automatic default to spray whatever they see in the garden that might harm their plants. Stop, take a moment and figure out a better way.  There are plenty out there.

   The science also backs us up on this one.  Bringing chemicals into your garden decreases the biodiversity, kills fungi and so kills the essentials for plant interaction and growth, wipes out good insects as well as the ones you think you don’t want.  If your concerted effort went to creating good soil, increase organic matter, & making nutrients available, then what happens is plants thrive, are naturally healthy and look beautiful.  Then an explosion of insects or a bit of black spot on the roses doesn’t matter.  They will naturally deal with it in the cycle of things and still continue to thrive. They have perfect health to stave off the hard times. It’s just like humans - the more nourished with good natural food and water we are, the better our immune system then the better we can survive minor and major illnesses.  

   At this point, I’ll also just say that we now know, even if we don’t understand completely all the pathways or implications, that chemicals are detrimental to us as humans, all the animals we live with and have long term effects in our environment.  You can pretend this isn’t the case as the science now tells us that it is.

If you’ve read this far, I applaud you, and have great faith that you are serious about creating a beautiful garden using thoughtful environmentally positive methods. Congratulation! My goodness, you are my perfect client - get in touch immediately!

The great thing is, and not to overload you totally, but there are so many things we can do in the design process to create sustainable ecologically better gardens.  Here’s a few more for you …..

🌿Decrease the grass in our gardens and make areas into gardens using plants that attract birds and insects.  

🌿Try to always use some native plants in our designs: to encourage insects, birds & biome from the surrounding area & to give extra green habitat,   We can still use plants that look good, perform well and give us flowers or foliage but incorporating a few natives as part of the plants list helps every time. 

🌿Use local or recycled or naturally made materials whenever possible.  

🌿Ask your designer or landscaper as you work with them, what sort of mulches they are using, take control of what’s coming into your garden environment.  Know and ask how these mulches are made. Work with people who can really guide you in these areas to make good long lasting decisions.

Please let me know your thoughts and questions.  It’s a topic you will start to see a lot more of I think in the gardening world.  And enjoy making those beautiful gardens.
Happy Gardening!