6 tips for an environmentally friendly garden

Here are six effective tips on how to make your garden more environmentally friendly, and opportunities to delve into what interests you most.

A healthy and living soil is the foundation for everything. A soil that is poor in topsoil, micro-life and soil cannot retain nutrients or water effectively.

The best way to improve soil, whether it is depleted soil, compact clay soil or nutrient-poor sandy soil, is to add amounts of organic matter, such as compost, grass clippings, leaves, straw, bokashi and manure. This is what micro-life (the small organisms we cannot see with the naked eye), insects and soil live on. When we add organic matter, the decomposers work like little gardeners. They break down the material into soil, while making the nutrients available to the plants. They also improve the soil structure, so that the soil retains water and nutrients optimally.

Cover crops are one way to strengthen the life in the soil. This way the micro-life and soil get all the food they need, and moisture and nutrients remain in the soil. But you can also add organic matter regularly in other ways, such as compost, rotted manure or bokashi. When we harvest what we have grown, we take nutrients from the soil. In order for there to be a good balance in the soil, we therefore need to add nutrients back.

Planting and growing many types of plants and flowers benefits both the soil and the important insects – pollinators. Let the garden become a paradise with lots of different flowers, plants and vegetables. Different plants are beneficial to different types of insects, and when the flora is broad you get more pollinators, decomposers and predatory insects to help you in the garden.

Let marigolds and honeysuckle grow in the vegetable garden, and feel free to grow older varieties of flowers that have been there for a long time, they are what the insects are used to. Also remember that a long flowering period benefits both insects and animals. Feel free to plant spring bulbs and plant perennials as flowers towards the end of the season.

Butterflies, bees, bumblebees, beetles and other insects benefit from a little extra attention. Give sand bees a pile of sand or set up a bug hotel. It will benefit both the little creatures and your garden. 

Also read: 
Build your own insect hotel – in seven easy steps

Many endangered beetles and other parasitic insects lack places to live. They need trees in various stages of decomposition to survive, so leave older trees standing and feel free to save a few piles of branches for these insects.  

All insects and animals need water. A shallow bath in the garden, such as a dish of gravel and water, gives insects something to drink on hot summer days.

In nature, no one rakes or blows leaves around with leaf blowers. Feel free to leave the leaves to turn into soil where they fall, or rake them into the beds – it's good for the microbiome and the soil. An old compost pile or pile of twigs can be a nice place for hedgehogs to live. Even corners with weeds, such as nettles and sedges, have a function in the organic garden. They act as nurseries for butterflies, for example. By the way, did you know that many types of weeds can be eaten or turned into completely free plant food?

Few insects and animals thrive on the lawn, so turn part of – or all of – your lawn into a flower meadow. There is a shortage of meadows today, which negatively affects butterflies and many other insects. The flower meadow is a paradise for pollinators and is also easy to maintain, it only needs to be mowed once a year.

Letting the lawn bloom in the spring can also help. Through the campaign #NoMowMay, the British are encouraged not to mow their lawns in May. This has recently also become more and more common in Norway.

Also read:
Sow a flower meadow

By watering less, you not only save water, you also save energy and money. Also, be sure to water after it has rained, as the water reaches deeper into the soil and does not evaporate as much as when the ground is dry. Another effective way to save water is to use cover crops, which reduces water requirements by about 70 percent.

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