by Algy Moncrieff

Created on: December 09, 2006   Last Updated: July 06, 2009

As a small piece of the environment, it makes sense that your garden should be a good place to make some effort to protect the environment. Simple changes could potentially make a big difference to the world, especially if enough people join in. There are loads of ways that you can make a difference, and here are a few:

1) Plant a tree or two - this will help use up quite a large amount of CO2 and replace it with oxygen, which is not a greenhouse gas and is much more desirable in general. Not only this but trees look attractive, and could help you cut your grocery bill if they are fruit trees. Trees will also provide a useful habitat for many small creatures, insects and birds, and so will attract more wildlife to your garden.

2) Make a compost heap or bin - then you can chuck all your garden waste and any spare vegetable matter you might have onto it, leave it to rot for a while, and then use the nutritious soil that is produced on your garden. It will save you money, as well as being better for the environment. Compost heaps are the natural habitat for earthworms, which will speed the decomposition process and make the soil produced especially dark and nutritious.

3) Use organic fertiliser (manure is best) - this may sound horrible, but it's so much better than horrible chemicals. I believe you can also get organic pesticides, as well as using methods such as pots of beer set in the soil to get rid of slugs rather than slug pellets which kill any wildlife that eats them, not just slugs. Ladybirds can be used to deal with aphids.

4) Replace the lawnmower with a goat. They are labour intensive admittedly since you have to look after them more than lawnmowers, but goats don't use petrol, and they give you a readily available supply of organic fertiliser. They can also give you milk. Keeping other animals such as chickens is another good way to obtain fertiliser and a supply of eggs.

5) Grow your own. Having a vegetable patch in your garden, as well as keeping chickens for their eggs, goats for their milk etc. will allow you to firstly cut down on your grocery bill, and secondly reduce the number of miles your food has travelled to get to your plate. Buying tomatoes shipped halfway across the world to get to your table and even driving to the supermarket to buy them is obviously worse for the environment than stepping into the garden to pick your own.

6) Increase biodiversity. Big neatly cropped lawns are all very well, but they are not a particularly good place for insects to live. Consider replacing a section of lawn with something more like a meadow, with wild flowers and longer grass. This will attract more insects, and therefore will also attract the more desirable birds and animals that like to eat them. Hedgerows also provide a good place for birds to nest and animals to live. A wildlife pond with plenty of water loving plants will encourage frogs and newts into the garden, not to mention more of the insects that they like to snack on.

All this of course depends on you having a large enough garden to make the changes. But even a small garden, or no garden, can be enough. It is possible to keep a small compost bin or wormery indoors to recycle spare vegetable matter. You can keep potted plants instead of trees. And even a small garden can benefit from most of these points (maybe not the goat).

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