How To Make Your Outside Space More Aesthetically Pleasing While Remaining Eco-Friendly
In both our professional and personal lives, sustainability is becoming a trend that is becoming increasingly challenging to ignore. As we become increasingly aware of the impact of our own carbon footprint on our planet, it’s vital to consider sustainable options when undergoing home improvement projects, whether indoor or outdoor.
So, suppose you’re considering giving your outside space a makeover to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. In that case, you’ll be pleased to learn that there are several ways of achieving this while remaining eco-friendly, whether you have a small backyard, balcony, large lawn, or anything in between. But how do you create a welcoming garden while minimizing the impact your works will have on the earth?
From growing your own fruits/vegetables and making a compost bin to using natural materials like garden timber to decorate and going one hundred percent organic, we outline several of the most creative and practical ways to make your outside space more aesthetically pleasing while remaining eco-friendly in our article below:
Use Natural Materials As Decorative Elements
Whenever planning a home improvement project, indoor or outdoor, the desire to go all out and purchase everything you need to build/decorate brand-new. However, every material/resource has embodied energy from its production, and depending on which materials you source, some have a more significant environmental impact than others.
As lovely as buying everything brand-new feels, knowing that you’re helping the environment can feel better, wherever possible, using natural materials as decorative elements is the best option when giving your outside space a makeover. You can do this by finding an eco-friendly timber merchant or landscaping supplier, planting your own, or upcycling household items in your garden.
Doing so gives your old, unwanted items a new lease on life instead of purchasing brand-new things, which can increase the cost of your improvement project and benefit its environmental impact. From using a wooden ladder instead of a pergola or trellis and turning wooden pallets into seating to repurposing household items as planters and garden timber to make sculptures/ other garden accessories, there are many ways to use natural materials as decorative elements.
Get inspiration for using garden timber to decorate your outdoor space by visiting providers’ websites like Suregreen, a timber merchant with landscaping products for trade and personal applications. Whether you’re looking for garden timber or composite decking boards, consider visiting their website to browse their product catalog and read product reviews. Or contact them directly to see how their products could help you create an aesthetic yet sustainable garden today.
Make Your Own Compost
One of the best ways to improve your outdoor space’s aesthetics is to enhance the quality of your soil, as this means you’re more likely to be successful when growing your own food or flowers. Not only does growing your own produce and flowers make you feel a sense of pride, but once they bloom or peak through the soil, they will bathe your garden in loads of natural colours, making it look prettier.
Yet, if your soil isn’t up to standards, you won’t have much luck growing the fruit/vegetable patch or flower bed of your dreams, which is where compost comes in. But, if you’ve never made compost, you might wonder how to get started. Thankfully, composting is relatively easy to start; all you need is a compost bin (which you can make yourself out of garden timber!); then once it’s built, you can start filling it with compostable materials like vegetable peel, coffee grains, used teabags, and more.
Once everything you’ve added has started to degrade, you can begin using it for various benefits around your garden, such as improving the structure of your soil, promoting healthier plant growth, conserving water, and reducing waste, which can help you make improvements that will make your garden more beautiful-looking and make sustainable improvements simultaneously.
Go Completely Organic
If you’re an avid gardener, whether you should go organic will undoubtedly crop up at one point. Especially if you’re aiming to grow your own produce, going one hundred percent organic is essential so you end up with the highest quality fruits/vegetables possible.
Not only does sustainable gardening help make your outdoor space look more aesthetically pleasing by cultivating a more ecologically sound garden, but it also reduces the environmental impact your gardening has on the planet by eliminating the use of artificial chemicals. Switching to organic gardening also allows you to reap other benefits. These can range from taking care of garden pests naturally and creating a closed-loop system of recycling/reusing to improving the quality of your products and creating outdoor space that is void of chemicals – plus many more!
The best thing is that you can start literally from the ground up; there are several ways to get started. Choosing the right spot, creating high-quality soil, choosing what to grow, encouraging wildlife to come into your garden, and companion planting all play a part in cultivating an organic garden that will benefit both its appearance and improve your carbon footprint.
Save Water
Our gardens require much water to keep them in the best possible condition, yet much of it is wasted, so saving as much as possible is essential. You can do this by installing a water butt on each downpipe, which you can make as sustainable as possible by repurposing household items like barrels or containers, into butts that will hold the water instead of wasting it.
Obviously, the main reason water is wasted in our gardens is over-watering, which is simple to remedy. Instead of watering little and often, you should switch to doing it less but deeply, as this encourages the roots to dig further into the soil to find water, reducing the need to water as much. However, if you have potted plants, you need to pay attention to them more or purchase water-retaining beads, which can help them stay moist for longer.
If you have an irrigated watering system, it also helps to look for eco-friendly ways to reduce water wastage from this system if you want to be as eco-conscious as possible. Such as mulching garden beds/trees, not over-watering, reducing run-off, installing smart technology, maintaining your systems well, and much more.
Get Rid Of Your Lawn (Or A Little Of It!)
Ultimately all gardeners want their outside space to be well-maintained, gorgeously colored, and nutrient-rich. One of the critical components of an aesthetically pleasing garden is for it to be weed-free and green, yet this can be a trickier task than it looks and typically involves many natural resources such as water and fertilizer to keep it in tip-top condition.
However, you can reduce the number of natural resources used in your outdoor space by replacing it (or a little bit of it!) with ornamental grasses, groundcovers, or low-growing shrubs, which can keep your garden looking aesthetically pleasing and sustainable at the same time.
Replacing your lawn or a little bit of it with one of the above is beneficial in many ways, from being easier to care for and reducing the number of chemicals used to adding more shady elements and protecting soil from drought and erosion; there are many reasons why you should consider making improvements to your lawn or at least a little of it.
