10 Steps to a Sustainable Garden

Looking for ways to make your garden more sustainable and eco-friendly?

As a landscape architect in Geelong, I'm often asked about creating gardens that work with nature, not against it.

It's about understanding the ecology of your garden – the interactions between plants, animals, and their environment. 

Here are my 10 tips

Sustainable landscaping offers a multitude of benefits, both for the environment and for homeowners. 

Sustainable landscaping techniques bring environmental benefits such as water conservation, reduced pollution, improved air quality, enhanced biodiversity, soil health, reduced waste and helps to cool urban areas, reducing the urban heat island effect.

For instance, using native plants and implementing efficient irrigation systems, significantly reduce water consumption. This is particularly crucial in areas prone to drought. And sustainable landscapes often incorporate native plants, which provide habitat and food for local wildlife, promoting biodiversity.

For homeowners and land managers such as local councils taking an ecological approach to landscape design has further benefits, such has reduced maintenance, cost savings, improved aesthetics and a healthier environment. 

Most importantly using sustainable landscape techniques reduces the amount of carbon required during construction, and considers how best to respond to a changing climate. Given Melbourne's variable rainfall, carbon positive landscaping emphasises water-wise practices, such as rainwater harvesting and drought-tolerant plant selection.

In essence, sustainable landscaping is a win-win situation, benefiting both the environment and the people who enjoy it.

Here are my top 10 tips for creating a more sustainable landscape :

1. Heal Injured Sites: Restore the natural ecological processes by removing damaging structures, restoring degraded soils, and re-establishing native vegetation.
2. Shape the Earth: Use earthworks to direct water, shelter structures, and subtly guide different land uses.
3. Catch and Store Water: Understand the flow of water on your property, harvest it, store it in the soil using swales and permeable surfaces, and use it efficiently with drip irrigation.
4. Pave Less: Use soft, absorbent surface materials like gravel, grass, or planted areas instead of hard surfacing.
5. Favor Living, Flexible Materials: Bind soil with living plants and geotextiles, and integrate architecture and landscape with green walls, vertical gardens, and roof gardens.
6. Use Local Materials: Use materials from your site or nearby, like salvaged demolition materials or natural timber, soil, or rocks, to reduce embodied energy and reinforce the local sense of place.
7. Create Diversity: Create a stable system by maximizing the number of species in the garden, like a food forest, and establish a variety of sources for essential inputs like water.
8. Feed the Soil, Not the Plants: Create diversity in the soil with fungi, insects, bacteria, and microbes that recycle organic matter into soil.
9. Share the Surplus: Share your excess produce with others or at a food swap, or sell it at a farmers market.
10. Create Systems: Use permaculture principles to think systematically and create sustainable landscapes.

Want to learn more about ecological landscaping in Geelong?

Contact Perry Mills Landscape Architects today for a consultation. We can help you create a sustainable and beautiful garden that you'll love for years to come.

Looking for a landscape architect in Melbourne?

Perry Mills Landscape Architects also serves the greater Melbourne area. Contact us today to learn more about our services.

Keywords: landscape architect Geelong, landscape architect Melbourne