Earth911 celebrates 52 years of Earth Day with 52 actions for the planet. Each week through Earth Day 2023, we’ll be sharing actions you can take to invest in the planet and make your life more sustainable. Gardeners love New Year. Because the seed catalog will start appearing in your mailbox. If you’ve already canceled all catalogs, this week you can take action for the planet by making sustainable gardening plans instead of browsing catalogs of plants that never actually grow. increase.
Action: Plan your garden
green gardening
Spending time in your garden is one of the easiest ways to experience the outdoors. And gardening brings many people closer to nature. But ironically, many of the things we do to grow our gardens aren’t very good for the environment. Lawns are the most notorious. Turfgrass is a monoculture that occupies more than three times his hectare of food crops in the United States. Maintaining large-scale monocultures creates pollution and health risks from fertilizers, herbicides and gas mowers. About a third of residential water is used for lawns.
But grass isn’t the only culprit. The pesticides we spray on our plants have an even greater impact. Pesticides weaken our food, kill beneficial insects and pests, and can kill wildlife and pets.More than 90% of Americans’ bodies contain pesticide residues. Pesticides and fertilizers pollute groundwater and drinking water, causing dead zones in the ocean.
Even the plants we grow can have adverse effects. Most of the invasive species that harm natural areas were introduced intentionally through cultivation, usually as ornamental plants.
Select project
This year could be the year to completely redeploy to create an eco-haven. But it’s easy for him to come up with too many projects in January to manage in July. So make a realistic plan. If starting from scratch is too much for you, take step-by-step instructions. Consider converting part of your garden to a more sustainable design.
Instead of changing what you plant, you can choose to incorporate sustainable maintenance practices into your existing landscape. Here are some ideas for greener gardening.
Whatever you do, designing on the fly while you’re in the nursery in the spring is a great way to waste money and plants. Now’s the time to figure out how to make your garden more sustainable in 2023 am.