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Gardening Can Be Green and Easy
by Ann Lovejoy

Welcome to the delightful world of sustainable gardening. Whether you love to garden but rarely find the time, or hate to garden because there is so much endless work involved, your life could change right now. From now on, gardening can be enriching, healing, meditative, hugely rewarding and even fun.

Two interrelated methods that result in successful and toxin-free gardening are called sustainable design and natural care. Sustainable gardening invites us to associate cooperatively with the natural world. If you find yourself whacking shrubs, fighting weeds and battling lawns, consider designing a garden that looks attractive all year yet doesn’t need you very much.

That’s what sustainable design is all about. I developed the principles of this sensible style through practical experimentation over many years. Originally influenced largely by artistic English gardeners, as I matured I wanted a new, less controlling relationship with the garden and the natural world. To enjoy a beautiful garden with less work and no toxic solutions, I began adapting principles of sustainable agriculture to home gardening. What I now call sustainable garden design is based on four basic precepts:

• Feed the soil and let the soil feed the plants.
• Match appropriate plants with appropriate environments.
• Put plants where their natural attributes support your design.
• Eliminate or reduce repetitive chores by design.

Though my personal preference is for naturalistic landscapes informed by the natural architecture of the plants, we can create sustainable gardens in almost any style using these principles. Those overwhelmed by out-of-control gardens find sustainable design helpful for replacing high maintenance design and plants with lovely and lastingly practical choices.

Sustainable design adapts a wide range of human needs and desires to the realities of each garden site. It eliminates repetitive chores through creative problem solving, like replacing hard-to-mow turf areas with ground covers and easy-going shrubs. Rather than constantly weeding narrow cracks in a sidewalk, fill them with fresh cement.

Handsome natives and adaptable plants from similar wet-winter, dry-summer climates establish readily here, quickly gaining independence. Well chosen plants, placed where they can thrive by nature, require little weeding, feeding, watering, and pruning.

A partner program, natural care, further reduces work in several ways. Sustainability in the garden is all about fabulous soil and vigorous roots. Promoting healthy soil leads to resilient, strongly rooted plants that are less attractive to pests and rarely bothered by diseases.

Placing plants according to their needs and eventual size largely eliminates the need for controlling measures like pruning. Soil care, usually in the form of nutritive mulching, eliminates tilling and much weeding, and promotes early and lasting independence in our plants. After all, nobody waters the woodlands and meadows, yet plants live for decades without intervention in undisturbed natural environments. Natural care also involves inventive problem solving. When pests or disease appear, rather than attacking the apparent problem, natural care supports the solution. Instead of reaching for a toxic spray, we might hose off the sufferer with water, then use compost, brewed compost teas, and other probiotic supplements to increase soil and root health.

After a season or two of natural care, most gardeners find that their plants and lawns are so healthy that they have far fewer problems to contend with. Using sustainable concepts and plenty of compost, gardening really can be both green and pleasantly easy.

Bainbridge islander Ann Lovejoy is the author of many books, including Handbook of Northwest Gardening: Natural-Sustainable-Organic (Sasquatch Books, 2003, 402 pages, $27.95)

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company