Saving Mother Earth can start in your backyard, when you know how to landscape with eco-friendly design that’s effortlessly beautiful with minimal maintenance. From reducing lawn space to combining decor and live plants, discover five eco-friendly tips to make your home a better and greener place.
- Use Native Plants
Fill your backyard with plants that grow naturally in your place. In Singapore, you may want to consider planting an orchid or crape jasmine, if you have enough space to grow a tree. You would also want to include plants that serve additional benefits, such as plants that attract butterflies and birds to your garden.
- Plants Trees to Reduce Energy Use
Planting trees is a wonderful way to cool your home and reduce the use of your air conditioner, especially during summer. To maximize the benefits of trees, plant one on the east and another on the west side of your house. This will shade your house as the sun rises and sets. Make sure to prune the trees regularly so it won’t completely block the natural sunlight from streaming into your home.
- Reduce the Size of Your Lawn
In most cases, a full-grass lawn isn’t useful, unless it’s a golf course. Keep in mind that grass is greedy; it eats up great amount of water and nutrients. Also, it’s annoying—who enjoys mowing the lawn all the time? However, this doesn’t mean you have to bear with brown dirt lawn—have moss lawn instead. Moss doesn’t grow their roots deeply into the soil, so it doesn’t fight with your other plants for nutrients. You also never have to mow it and it feels cooling to the feet.
- Make a Compost Pit
Composting happens in the nature and is a process that enriches the soil with nutrients for the plants to absorb in order to grow healthily. Use biodegradable wastes from your home to make your own compost pit. Things like dried leaves, fruit peels, grass clipping, and other organic wastes are great materials to mix into your garden soil. By composting, you’re getting many benefits, such as reducing municipal waste, retention of soil moisture, boosting plant’s immune system, and reducing the need to chemical fertilizers.
With a few considerations when landscaping your outdoor space, you can make your place eco-friendly and make Mother Nature proud. Plus, you can save great amount of energy, time, and resources, and have more time to enjoy your beautiful backyard.
