Get into Green Habits

1. Work with nature. Grow native plants which will thrive in your local conditions. If you live in an arid area choose plants which are tolerant of draught. Labouring in a garden is healthy, satisfying, cheap and can be fine tuned to your own vision of your environment.
2. Grow a good variety of plants including, shrubs and hedges for nesting, nectar plants and caterpillar food such as nettles.
3. Do not be too tidy under hedges, keep a rough area to encourage wild life, keep a pile of logs or branches to rot down and an uncut grass area with a few weeds.
4. Put up home made birds nesting boxes, bee nests with hollow tubes, and make areas safe from predators.
5. Provide appropriate food and water for birds and hedgehogs. Birds and hedgehogs can be great eaters of slugs!
6. Reuse, recycle, repurpose and retry if you fail, because that is what gardeners do. Don’t worry if your garden is not perfection – it is not a finished painting, but, an evolving organism.
7. Have a fast compost bin for soft waste and a slow one for twigs and harder matter plus a wire frame for leaf mould. Compost provides one of the best organic soil improvers.
8. Try growing your own herbs and vegetables without chemicals but using complementary planting.e.g. Tomatoes and French marigolds, Brassicas with Onions and Leeks
9. Keep your greenhouse unheated but insulate tender plants with straw. You will be less encouraged to buy imported plants from exotic regions and will save fuel.
10. Maintain your green sense of humour and green fingers but don’t become green with envy when your neighbours buy the latest Chinese electronic gardening gizmo.

• Watering the garden
• Nine ways to  Make your Garden Eco Friendly
• Five Organic methods for dealing with greenfly