6 Eco-Friendly Landscaping Ideas Trending Now
Eco-friendly landscaping has gained popularity in the past few years for obvious good reasons. Among the good reasons is that it significantly reduces maintenance costs, limit your exposure to harmful toxins from pesticides and fertilizers and also conserve excellent resources. Eco-friendly landscaping is one way to start saving the environment right from your small backyard.
Eco-friendly landscaping can take you a long way with little maintenance costs and time. The primary aim for eco-friendly landscaping is to minimize the input of resources as well as the output of waste in our backyards. For you to attain eco-friendly aspirations, you must regard water as a resource, preserve the existing plants, value the soil and save materials.
Even if you are starting your eco-friendly landscaping from scratch or refurbishing an existing backyard, you can make eco-friendly choices for your backyard outlook.
Traditionally, backyards were used as a storage place for farm tools and maybe other old things you needed to dispose of. However, if you want a space other than the living room where you can relax and wander away from thoughts and stresses of your daily chores, an eco-friendly backyard can offer you a therapeutic, relaxing space. You can quickly build or redesign an existing shed into a leisure room.
Designing a Backyard Shed
In order to design a shed, you will have to dispose of unwanted items and goods. You will also need to clear and clean the space thoroughly. You can choose any desired painting for your shed wall and consider hanging decorative items like children artwork and designs that create a serene environment. With these backyard shed inspirations and ideas, your traditional backyard shed could become an exciting additional room to the home.
You can also design the floor by choosing flooring preferences that suit your design tastes. You are at liberty to decide the type of flooring you want but the common flooring materials are tiles, carpet, vinyl, and decorative rugs. It is important to design a shed floor that is easy to maintain and cost effective.
Finally, you can light up your backyard shed. It is important to choose the most suitable type of lighting system that will always influence the setting of the shed. By the way, a properly lit shed is usually inviting especially at twilight hours.
Now that you have a therapeutic backyard shed, how about designing an eco-friendly landscape to go with it? Here are six great eco-friendly landscaping ideas for small backyards.
1. Consider Low-Maintenance Plants
When planning an eco-friendly landscape, it is important that you consider planting native, drought resistant plants. Native plants will quickly adapt to your place implying that they will naturally need minimum maintenance and water as compared to exotic plant species. The plants will also demand small amounts of pesticides since they are more resistant to diseases and pests compared to exotic ones.
2. Use Drip Irrigation Systems
Drip irrigation mostly delivers water straight to the plant roots with little wastage. Considering that your backyard is small, you need to minimize water wastage. You can reduce your water use by storing rainwater and using it to irrigate your plants. This is the best way to reduce your water bills. Moreover, rainwater is free of chemicals and is suitable for your landscaping plants.
3. Add Hardscapes in Your Small Backyard
Hardscapes on a small backyard will not only give you more outdoor living space but will also substantially cut down the amount of water needed to water your backyard. This can be done by replacing a patch of natural grass with an eco-friendly patio or by reducing your lawn with low-maintenance plants.
4. Artificial Grass
Growing artificial grass has gained momentum due to the expanding idea in less water landscaping. As such, synthetic turf has become the first alternative for natural grass where people can relax and children can play. It is also popular because it is evergreen and luxurious even during serious droughts. Also, its fame arises from its easy to maintain nature as compared to natural grass.
5. Recycling
You can look around for materials that you can recycle to reduce waste and save money while at it. For instance, you can use paper bags as a biodegradable weed control and as mulch in your flowering garden.
You can also use old paint containers and bowls for planters, or untreated pallets to make a vertical garden. In fact, anything that can hold soil, and is regarded as trash, can be used as a planter.
6. Composting
Instead of disposing of that food waste, dried leaves, banana peels, and newspapers, you can turn them into nutrient-rich compost. You can pile these, and other kitchen wastes, into your compost bin and make your compost to feed your small backyard garden plants. Compost manure is the best eco-friendly alternative to fertilizers. Fertilizers contain chemicals that are not eco-friendly hence not best for a small backyard garden.
Conclusion
With these six landscaping ideas for small backyards you can be sure to have an eco-friendly design. The six ideas can help green up your small backyard to not only make it as therapeutic as possible but also help you save money, water, and energy.
