Throughout the reading of the landscaping, the creation of beautiful spaces has been taken into account but the environmental impact of its surroundings and the cost of watering the different crops and species has not been taken into account. Normally this expense does not have much to do with a garden climate, so it is not a sustainable garden. The sustainable garden It is one that can fulfill its ornamental function but is balanced with the climate of the area where it lives.
In this article we are going to tell you everything you need to know about what a sustainable garden is, what its characteristics and benefits are.
Need for a sustainable garden
Throughout history, landscaping has always focused on creating beautiful spaces, sadly in many cases the environmental impact and the cost of irrigating crops of species are not considered. This fee has nothing to do with the climate in which the garden is located.
To avoid such problems, steps have been taken in garden planning, focusing primarily on sustainability. In many cases they began to use techniques typical of dry gardening, which was the system used by the Arabs to build impressive gardens in the Iberian Peninsula. Thanks to these methods, the goal is to create self-sufficient gardens by using drought-tolerant species and plantings designed to increase humidity.
A very important aspect of sustainable gardens is the introduction of native plants, which they can withstand the climatic conditions of every part of the planet. All the actions that must be carried out in this type of orchards must affect each other, we can say that they are periodic actions whose purpose is to influence their autonomous development, so irrigation and pruning do not really exist.
Sustainable gardens use existing technologies and resources to create green spaces that gain value over time, and seek the maturity of the natural development of the space in a balanced way.
Benefits of a sustainable garden
Better economy
The cost of building a sustainable garden is the same as the cost of building a traditional garden, depending on the design and accessories we want to place. These are the reasons why sustainable gardens are cheaper than traditional ones:
- Reduction of water consumption due to good design and careful selection of xerophytes according to the climate, the type of soil and the direction of the sun.
- If necessary, an efficient irrigation system can be chosen
- Can accumulate rainwater
- Low maintenancethe cycle will depend on the client’s requirements, but the designed and selected plants respect their planting framework, allowing the garden to grow independently for a long time without manual intervention.
- Careful pruning: Due to the previous point, trees and shrubs should not be pruned like traditional gardens.
- Phytosanitary products are not used, the plants are grown in the conditions necessary to make them strong and healthy.
- Reduced use of compost
- Reduce the lawn area and use lawns with low water consumption (lower growth, fewer cuts), lower maintenance cost and less need for fertilizer
Important water savings
In recent years, the design of the garden has been influenced by the British style, with well-watered shrubs and live flowers filling all the spaces, while those empty areas are covered with grass. Drought is considered a restriction.
Fortunately, due to people’s understanding of drought and dry years, water resources are being used rationally through efficient irrigation systems. Using plants from the Mediterranean climate makes it easier for us and opens the door to all kinds of vegetation that we can use in the garden.
Sustainable gardening, also known as xero-gardening (from the Greek xero- “dry”) provides us with the tools to make this type of garden. It is an almost self-sufficient horticulture that maximizes all available resources, formulates guidelines for saving water, human and material resources and, ultimately, minimizes the consumption of phytosanitary products.
In short, the use of native plants with low water consumption, together with a planned design and efficient irrigation systems, and the collection of rainwater when possible, It reduces the water consumption of our garden by 70% compared to traditional orchards.
Reduction of maintenance tasks
When considering a sustainable garden, we will investigate suitable plant selections based on climate, soil type, direction, planting framework, customer preferences and functions, and use all of this to imagine what the garden will look like in a few years. These aspects, added to the reasonable and minimum consumption of water necessary for healthy and strong plants, help us to carry out a minimum maintenance.
- If the planting framework and plant development are not considered, will cause pruning or plant removal work
- If we water too much, the plants will grow too large and we will have to prune. It can also cause fungi and diseases, we will have to use phytosanitary products
- By not taking into account the climate and the type of soil, plants will not develop normally and will start to have problems fertilization, plant changes, diseases, etc.
- Choosing lawns with low water consumption also helps us reduce maintenance, because they are slow-growing lawns (less pruning), they require less fertilizer (they will not overgrow and they will be less pruned), and they will not get diseases. All of this means less maintenance
The sustainable garden respects the environment
Automatic watering and its abuse are the worst enemies of modern Mediterranean gardeners. This effort to imitate English gardens has caused us to lose the diversity of plants, which give us the color, shape and life of our garden, and are related to the climate and the soil. Our gardens are all the same, they have lost their identity.
When we go through a dry spell and watering is prohibited, all the plants in the garden die. This is a sign that we have done something wrong and we must resort to a garden that respects our environment and adapts to the environmental conditions of the area.
Design ideas
Once we have understood the essence of a sustainable garden, we can decorate said garden with suitable furniture and lights. When choosing our garden furniture, the ideal is that we opt for durable furniturewhich are the ones that have the least impact on nature in the medium term.
Avoiding shopping is also a gesture of sustainable development, even in our garden lighting system. To be as ecological as possibleit is ideal to choose solar lights powered by solar energy. On some occasions this may not be possible, either because we live in places with less solar incidence, or because we need more energy. We can also use energy efficient LED lighting.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about the sustainable garden and its characteristics.
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