Stop harming the environment by making your garden more eco-friendly in 5 easy steps

A garden should mimic nature and that means making it as eco-friendly as possible. Walk into most gardens in the United State and you'll see it's certainly not what is happening, but things need to change and you can be one of the few who tries their hardest to build an eco-friendly garden that helps the environment instead of hindering it. Here are a few things you might want to do first if you're ready to change.

Plant bright flowers

When you plant a lot of bright flowers in your garden it will make the place look prettier, but more importantly than that you'll also attract lots of beneficial insects. These insects will scare away the ones you don't want anywhere near your flowers. Try to pick specific flowers that will bloom as late into the autumn as possible because this will give the little bees and bugs more time to pollinate. Marigolds and sunflowers are a great place to start, but speak to your local garden center for more information.

Light up your garden with solar power

You don't want a garden that is impossible to see as soon as the sun disappears for the night. You can take advantage of the sun before it goes away by using solar lighting to light your garden up. They will charge throughout the day and as soon as the light falls below a certain level they'll automatically come on. It's a great way to lighten up the path leading to your back door, plus if you want to admire your flowers at night you can place the lights in your flower beds.

Use recycled packaging

Lots of packaging you're left with can easily be used in the garden instead of throwing it in the trash. Gardeners like to cut plastic bottles in half so they can put them over small plants to keep them safe while they're in the early stages of growth. Clean your yogurt posts and you can use them for seedlings. You can also use larger plastic cartons to turn into seed trays. Just get creative and there are plenty of ways you can use packaging in your garden so you don't need to get rid of it.

Stop using too much water

If you use a rain barrel to collect water you can quite happily use as much as you want, but instead of wasting water from your taps there are other routes you can take. If you can plant a layer of mulch on top of your soil you'll find it will help to retain a lot of water instead of letting most of it disappear into the ground. Drip lines are another great way to save water and you'll use less than the amount you'd use if you had a sprinkler system set up.

Charge things up without electricity

I'm sure you'll have lots of outdoor power equipment that is needed to tend to your garden, but in order to power them it will usually take a lot of electricity. Instead of plugging them into a socket to charge them up you can use solar chargers so the sun can take care of energizing them. You can even buy specific power equipment that will be able to charge up by themselves if you leave them out in the sun. The solar lawnmowers is one such piece of equipment this is becoming popular these days.

It's easy once you know what to do

Nothing we've spoken about will cause you great pain to set up, but once everything is done you can be happier knowing your garden is a lot more eco-friendly. The weather is starting to pick up and once it's a little hotter you'll have plenty of time to spend in your garden implementing the things we've spoken about today.