Nature conservation and gardening offer so many opportunities to go greener, from reducing chemicals to growing your own food and carbon capture.
It’s also good for the body and mind. Not only is gardening a good physical workout but contact with a type of bacteria found in soil (Mycobacterium vaccae) has been found to trigger the release of the “happy hormone”, serotonin, in the brain[1]!
So with all these benefits in mind, here’s our Big Green Ideas List for achieving climate goals through nature conservation and gardening.
Plant trees
Plant a tree, lots of trees, or a leafy plant
Trees absorb and lock away carbon – on average about 22kg of CO2 per year[2] – and research shows that planting billions of trees is the simplest and cheapest way to help tackle the climate crisis[3].
While we absolutely must reduce emissions as well, planting trees is a quick, easy win, because it doesn’t require political will or rely on technology that hasn’t been invented yet. It’s a low-tech, cheap solution that can be started right now by anyone, anywhere.
Find out about planting more trees locally and globally
Join others in your community
Join a growers’ collective or gardening club
Gardening clubs and growers collectives provide opportunities to swap seeds, seedlings, produce, and advice to help your crops flourish. They may also give you discounts at your local garden centre.
Teach or learn gardening skills
As more people start growing their own food, there’s a great opportunity for people to learn from each other. In addition to gardening clubs, friendly neighbours can pass on skills and encouragement, and even provide on-the-spot guidance on why your tomatoes just aren’t doing well this year.
Let a neighbour use your garden
If you can’t use your garden yourself due to lack of time or physical restrictions, let a neighbour use it to grow fruit and vegetables that you can share. If you don’t know anyone, ask at a gardening club, or try Lend and Tend (UK), AllotMe (UK) or Shared Earth (US).
Avoid single-use plastic
Avoid single-use plastic plant pots
Easier said than done. Change needs to come from manufacturers and garden centres, but they won’t change unless we demand it.
If possible, choose seeds, or seedlings in compostable pots instead.
Ask your garden centre manager to stock compostable plant pots instead of plastic ones, and to accept pots back for reuse. (Encourage them to use it as a marketing opportunity.)
Meanwhile, make your own seed pots from newspaper or loo roll middles, and reuse the plastic pots you already have indefinitely.
Use fabric plant ties instead of plastic ones
You can make gentle but strong plant ties out of an old tea towel, tights or t-shirt. Just cut them up into strips about an inch wide. There’s no need to hem them.
Save water
Choose the right plants to minimise watering and plant loss
Choose plants that are adapted to your local environment, e.g. drought-tolerant varieties for dry areas. Always consider the amount of sun/shade, the likelihood of dry conditions or frost, and soil pH before deciding which plant to put where. Your plants will be healthier, you’ll waste less money and time watering them, and you’ll waste less money replacing them if they die.
Fit a water-butt
Water butts connect to your downpipe and collect rainwater that would otherwise soak into the ground or run into a drain. When it’s dry, they’re a handy source of water for watering plants.
Re-use your water (grey water/gray water)
Grey water (or gray water) is water that’s been used once so isn’t suitable for drinking, but can be reused for other purposes like flushing toilets or watering certain plants.
Bathwater is a good example. You can use your bathwater to water your houseplants or flower garden (but not plants that produce edible things). You can also water your plants using water from a fish tank, aircon unit, condensing tumble dryer, dog bowl, cooking water, washing machine or dishwasher.
Can reusing grey water make that much of a difference? Actually, yes. According to How Stuff Works, if everyone in America used only grey/gray water for their plants, it could save 27 billion litres (6.6 billion gallons) of water every day (and the associated energy costs of processing it and pumping it).
Don’t water your lawn in a drought
The roots will get stronger as they search deeper for water, and your lawn will recover.
Avoid harmful chemicals
Use companion planting to keep pests away without chemicals
Companion planting means planting certain combinations of plants together to deter pests, enrich the soil, and provide shelter. Examples include growing French marigolds with tomatoes to repel greenfly and blackfly, and planting leeks and carrots together as they each repel the other’s pests. Find more examples of companion planting from Gardeners World.
Weed by hand
Chemicals from weedkillers accumulate in the soil, reduce biodiversity, and may run off into rivers. Alternatives include using woodchip mulches to suppress weeds in flowerbeds, and laying cardboard or old carpet over vegetable beds in the weeks leading up to planting. This should reduce weed growth, making hand-weeding easier.
Hand-weeding can be relaxing and meditative, but it can also be quite enjoyable when done with friends and a cold drink on a summer day (depending on your friends of course).
Grow your own food
Grow your own food
Every piece of food that you grow yourself saves you money, has zero food miles, zero packaging waste, gets you outside in the fresh air, and gives you a massive sense of achievement. You also get the satisfaction of eating seasonally and learning to store and use your own produce, and you can do it on a small or large scale.
Find out about growing your own food
Eat seasonally
There’s a cost to eating whatever we want, whenever we want it – our food has to travel further, often from different continents. Whether it travels by sea or high-altitude air freight, this increases the emissions generated to bring your food to your table. It’s becoming harder to justify eating our favourites all year round.
Alternatives include buying local and growing your own.
Find out more about eating seasonallly
Use vertical space
Vertical spaces like fences, sunny walls, and support structures can be used to grow more fruit and vegetables. For example, fruit trees like apricots do well against sunny walls; herbs and veg can be grown in containers fixed to a fence; and beans and tomatoes can be grown up cones made from bamboo sticks.
Get an allotment
If you’re prepared to put in the time and effort, an allotment is a great way to grow more food than you can at home. Waiting lists can be long, so put your name down early if you want one. If you’re not sure how much time you can spare, share a plot and the workload with a friend. But if you’ve got a plot, and you’re not using it, give it up for someone who will get more use out of it.
Make the most of what you have
Replace driveways and patios with hardwearing low-growing plants
Large areas of hardstanding increase the risk of flooding, reflect heat back into our houses (increasing overheating) and reduce the amount of carbon absorption by plants.
Re-green your garden by getting rid of large areas of concrete, and let low-growing plants take over your driveway.
Make the most of what grows naturally
Don’t waste food that grows naturally. Use the blackberries, wild strawberries and nettles that grow in the far corners of your garden, and help yourself to the apples and courgettes that people leave in baskets by their gates.
If you are foraging, learn from someone who knows what they are looking at and use a good field guide. Many plants look similar to dangerous ones, so only eat something if you’re certain it’s safe. Always pick from areas that are away from pollution sources, and only take what you need.
Make your own compost
Compost your food waste
Any bits of fruit and vegetables you can’t use can be composted. Your local council might collect this kerbside (ours collects in plastic caddies, a little one inside the house and a bigger one which goes out to the road). We collect ours in a heavy-lidded casserole dish instead. The heavy lid seals it and keeps the smell inside (even in summer). Then we dump it on the compost heap and forget about it. One to two years later, you’ve got free compost in which to grow your vegetables.
Learn what can be composted
You can compost more than just food scraps! Surprising things you can compost include cardboard, cork and tea leaves, and manure from animals that only eat plants (the common factor is all these things were once plants). If you want to know more, here’s a detailed list and instructions from Compostable Things.
Understand the difference between “compostable” (good) and “biodegradable” (quite possibly bad)
Most people, and manufacturers, use the words “compostable” and “biodegradable” interchangeably, but there are important differences.
- Compostable means something will decompose back into natural, non-toxic elements, under the conditions found in your compost heap
- Biodegradable means it can decompose into its elements, but typically over a much longer time period, and only at a temperature and moisture content not usually found in your compost heap. It may also be, or contain, plastic!
Worst of all, “biodegradable plastic” doesn’t decompose in landfill (because the oxygen levels are too low) but it isn’t recyclable either! So overall, “biodegradable” is not a very sustainable option, best treated as greenwashing and avoided.
Small changes for the better
Make small changes in the garden
- use broken-up eggshells for slug control
- use lolly sticks (popsicle sticks) instead of buying plastic plant labels
- re-use plastic plant pots to start seedlings or pot them on
- make your own seed pots from newspaper or loo roll middles
- use companion planting to keep pests away without using chemicals
Garden with bees in mind
Plant bee-and-insect-friendly plants in your borders
Create safe, pesticide-free habitats for bees and beneficial insects by planting bee-friendly and insect-friendly plants in your garden.
Find out more about planting bee-friendly plants at home.
Allow wildflowers to grow in your lawn
Most of us have been brought up believing that only a perfect, uniform swathe of green lawn is acceptable. But maintaining a lawn made up of only one type of grass takes time and money, adds harmful chemicals to the soil and reduces the diversity of creatures in your lawn.
Allowing wildflowers to grow in your lawn makes for an easier life, improves biodiversity, supports insects and looks really pretty.
Remove your fake lawn
Fake lawns are easy to maintain, but that’s about their only advantage. From an environmental point of view, they are a desolate wasteland, and the plastic will take hundreds of years to break down when it’s no longer wanted.
Replacing your fake lawn with grass, wildflowers, vegetables, clover, chamomile or even moss will provide habitats for beneficial insects, and will even absorb carbon (every little helps).
Gardeners might be able to use your old fake lawn as a weed-suppressing blanket or to keep the heat in a compost heap – try offering it on Freecycle or a similar site.
If you can’t maintain your lawn yourself due to lack of time or physical restrictions, consider letting a neighbour use it to grow fruit and vegetables that you can share.
Re-wild entire spaces
Give part of your garden, farm, or public space over to nature.
Re-wilded areas absorb more carbon and allow birds and insects to thrive.
Let your grass grow long
Keep the mower in the shed in May! Letting your grass grow in May allows more flowers to bloom, providing pollinators with up to 10 times more nectar. Wildlife charity Plantlife encourages all gardeners to take part in #NoMowMay, followed by #LetItBloomJune and #KneeHighJuly for committed non-mowers.
Leave your leaves
Fallen leaves provide food and shelter for wildlife, gradually decompose returning nutrients to the soil, and form a mulch cutting down on spring weeding. Many pollinators overwinter in dead leaves and last year’s dry, hollow stems, so leave the spring tidy-up until late April to give the insects time to mature and fly away.
Lobby your homeowners’ association
This one is probably irrelevant to most UK readers, who would find it incredible that anyone can dictate what you can grow on your own land, but this is a thing in the US. If it affects you, lobby your homeowners’ association to permit a wider variety of lawn plants that are bee-friendly and drought-tolerant. See if you can gain the support of other residents, then lobby for a change in permissions. If you’re part of a free community, use your garden to demonstrate how attractive and useful gardens can be when they aren’t just laid to lawn.
[1] “Identification of an immune-responsive mesolimbocortical serotonergic system: Potential role in regulation of emotional behavior” Lowry et al (2007). Neuroscience 146 (2) p 756-772, [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2007.01.067
[2] Urbanforestrynetwork.org. (2019). Trees Improve Our Air Quality. [online] Available at: http://urbanforestrynetwork.org/benefits/air%20quality.htm [Accessed 27 Jul. 2019]
[3] “The restoration of forested land at a global scale could help capture atmospheric carbon and mitigate climate change.” Bastin et al (2019). The global tree restoration potential. Science, [online] 365(6448), pp.76-79. Available at: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76.2
Image credits:
Tomatoes on a vine – photo by Davor Denkovski on Unsplash
Orchard – photo by Abigail Miller on Unsplash
Man and boy gardening – photo by CDC on Unsplash
Seedlings – photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Border filled with drought-tolerant plants – photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash
Nasturtiums (companion plants) – photo by Stella de Smit on Unsplash
Strawberries – photo by Farsai Chaikulngamdee on Unsplash
Blackberries – photo by Amanda Hortiz on Unsplash
Handful of compost – photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash
Seedlings growing in toilet roll middles – photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
English country garden – photo by Kate Spencer
Dry grasses in the mist – photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash