Sustainable gardening: 10 ways to embrace nature

While grass can help lock up carbon, lawn care can tip the balance the other way. In the Trust’s gardens we’re actively reviewing how much grass we cut, and how often we do it. We’re always looking for positive outcomes for nature, so will be carefully monitoring any changes.

When you do mow, can you set your blades a bit higher so that low flowering plants like selfheal and clover make it through the cut to feed the bees? Let the clippings fall back onto the surface rather than collecting them. Or perhaps you can set aside an area to let the grass grow long.

You might even think about having a smaller lawn or no lawn altogether, planting the space with trees and shrubs. Or perhaps you could start a fruit and vegetable patch to grow your own edibles – and have 100% control of what chemicals are applied to them.

Some gardeners like to mimic agricultural practices, using sheet mulches to warm up the soil in spring, suppress weeds and keep crops like strawberries clean. But this doesn’t have to mean metres and metres of plastic – biodegradable corn starch or heavyweight paper mulches can do this too.

For strawberries, straw is another option, as is chopped, mineralised straw (a processed alternative).

We’re using battery-powered equipment in Trust gardens all across Scotland now when older kit retires. The small petrol engines of mowers, strimmers and hedge cutters can emit proportionately far more greenhouse gas emissions than their larger cousins in cars.

Switching to electric and battery-powered equipment, while not perfect, is much cleaner in operation. There is also less noise and vibration for users. Many brands have interchangeable batteries, which helps cut costs.

Applying pesticides can have unintended and unwanted consequences for nature and the environment, particularly if applied repeatedly over years.

There are some circumstances where pesticides are hard to avoid – herbicides used to prevent the spread of invasive non-native plants for example, which is a legal obligation. But where we’ve managed to move away from pesticides altogether, our gardeners report much greater biodiversity around them. Their gardens may suffer from the odd aphid, but those aphids feed the birds ... and we love the increased birdsong, as do our members and visitors.

There are also ways to deal with slugs sustainably – beer traps are one, as is closing your eyes and stomping on them!

Don’t rush to cut down herbaceous plants with seedheads after they flower – they leave a wee winter larder for birds when times are tough.

Leaving a pile of leaves in a quiet corner might give a hibernation home to a hedgehog or a toad, who may help you with your slugs the following year – no need for slug pellets.

Anecdotally, growing plants in partnership has long been a way to try and keep pests from attacking edible crops. Known as companion planting, examples include growing nasturtiums with beans to help deter aphids, alliums around carrots to help deter carrot root fly, and marigolds with broccoli and potatoes to deter beetles.

Our gardens will sometimes need extra food, and that can come in a number of natural ways. In Trust gardens we are experimenting with, and even making, biochar (a form of charcoal), using it as a soil additive where it may improve plant health through increasing water and nutrient retention, as well as capturing carbon. Another area of experimentation in our gardens is the application of volcanic rock dust fertiliser, which is said to add trace minerals to the soil.

You can make your own natural fertiliser from nettles or comfrey, rotted down in water for a few weeks and then diluted. You can find further details online, but be warned: although it’s very cheap (and effective), it stinks!

Read more about biochar

While many of us love getting new cultivars and growing big showy exotics, the closer your plant choice is to the native plants around you, the more comfortable the local wildlife will be. By choosing a proportion from the same genera and similar species as you find in the wild locally, you will increase the potential to create a healthy habitat in your garden where nature can thrive.

Avoid double and sterile flowers where possible, because pollinators work hard checking them out, only to find there is no nectar to feed on.

While open, flat flowers are generally easiest for pollinators to access, you don’t need to end up with a garden of daisies – pollinators have adapted to be able to feed from a variety of flower shapes.

Crop rotation is an established growing technique for vegetable gardens, which helps to manage pests and diseases. Including some nitrogen-fixing plants like peas, beans and other legumes will help feed the soil too.

One of the most positive and hopeful things we can all do is to plant a tree. This will provide ecosystem services for decades, helping to capture carbon, reduce pollution and create a habitat for wildlife.

It’s important to plant the right kind of tree in the right place though – the last thing you want to see is it being cut down because it was too big for the space you put it, deemed ‘in the way’ or not valued by the landowner.

There are many organisations, including the National Trust for Scotland, that plant trees and woodlands with an eye on their long-term life, secure for generations to come. We can even plant a tree in memory of someone for you.