Living smart: Ground zero

Wherever you live, your approach to gardening and landscape design can have a beneficial effect on your health, comfort and wallet by reducing the amount of energy your household consumes.

 

 

Planting deciduous trees on the northern side of the house will provide shade in summer, while allowing the sun to warm your rooms in winter when the trees have lost their leaves. 

 

Use evergreen trees and shrubs as a kind of blanket for the east and west sides of the house – native plants are ideal. Plant all large ever-greens towards the south so they won’t block the low winter sun. Shade pergolas over outdoor living areas with deciduous climbing plants.

Solar roof panels will heat your swimming pool economically and solar lights can be used for lighting garden paths and outdoor areas.

Growing food and composting waste is a step towards living more sustainably. Grow herbs and salad vegetables in containers and espalier fruit trees on a fence or wall if space is limited. Dwarf varieties are available at garden centres.

Food scraps can be recycled by setting up a worm farm or using the bokashi composting method. Tiger worms will transform your kitchen waste (though not onion skins and citrus fruit) into worm castings – an excellent soil conditioner. The bokashi process involves fermenting organic material in a series of airtight buckets beneath your kitchen sink – ideal for apartment dwellers.

Use compost as a mulch on garden beds to increase water retention, reduce evaporation and compress weeds. Group plants with similar water requirements – preferably low – and install a drip irrigation system. Use run-off water from the roof by spreading it through gutter downpipes or storing it in tanks. 

Finally, we need to rethink our approach to covering the land with hard impermeable surfaces that direct water into waste or stormwater systems. This precious commodity should be going back into the ground where it can do what it was meant to do: help to regenerate life.