Eco Gardens - What They Really Mean

Eco Gardens - What They Really Mean - By: Justin Blackheel


Eco gardens are environment friendly gardens, which are also friendly to wildlife and allows for the promotion of sustainable living concepts. Eco gardens are aimed at creating a garden that is in perfect harmony with nature and the promotion of indigenous plants. Becoming an eco gardener does not mean you have to dump your garden design plans, far from it. Eco gardens aim to reduce the carbon footprint and it is quite easy to become an environmentally friendly gardener without compromising your gardening plans.

In this article you will get a broad overview of how to go about setting up an eco garden without too much trouble.

The first step in setting up an eco garden is to consider the materials you plan to use. You need to query where they come from and whether they have been ethically sourced. Let us take for example natural stone that you want to use in your garden; you need to make sure that it comes from adult mines that have proper healthy and safety standards for their workers, otherwise don’t buy the stone.

Patio and drive areas do have a certain amount of carbon that gets produced when newly laid. This can be offset by planting one or more trees to absorb the carbon dioxide.

People are slowly learning the importance of recycling household items like plastic, glass, paper and aluminum. Why not apply the same recycling rules to garden materials; there are plenty that can be reused.

You can try recycling wood boards by using them to make a good old fashioned panel fence for your garden. Color wash it Tom Sawyer style and you will have a great looking boundary wall. Crush colored glass and old CDs and make attractive borders for your plants or to use as top dressing for plant pots. Tires that are wire free can be cut up and used in the play area to cushion the falls that are inevitable when you have kids

Organic compost is king – there’s no denying that making your own compost pile is still one of the best ways to encourage nutrient rich soil the natural way. You can produce a really healthy garden that is environmentally friendly through the use of organic pesticides and fertilizers. There are however other products like bone meal, fish emulsion, rock phosphate and blood meal among others that can provide organic nutrients to the garden.

If you have to use pesticides then choose from the range of natural products that are available to kill a particular pest or weeds. Not all insects we consider pests really are pests, in fact many of them are necessary and beneficial for the garden. Educate yourself in this area and try not to make too much use of pesticides natural or otherwise.

Many products for disease control tend to leave a heavy footprint on the environment and it is best not to use these harsh insecticides. There are gentler products that can be equally effective and best of all they are totally environmentally friendly. Plant disease can be fought with solutions made from baking soda, mild and certain mild cooking oils. Try potassium bicarbonate – it is effective in curing quite a few plant diseases.

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Don’t Buy a Christmas Tree Hire a Christmas Tree and Offset Your Carbon Footprint - By: Graham Willett


The planet is dying and we are killing it. Carbon emissions and carbon footprints are the weapons with which we yield destruction. Businesses have noticed this and have started overhauling their day to day operations to halt their part of the destruction. Individuals have been pushed in a similar direction. This challenge may be one that seems unable to answer but it is not. There are several things that take effort but one that can be done with very much ease.
Offsetting your carbon footprint, at first look may be difficult. Give up driving your car and walk everywhere? That would be easy for those who live in urban areas but what of those who live in the country? Growing fruits and vegetables would be simple for those who live in the country but the same could not be said for those who live in urban areas. While these ways of offsetting a person's carbon footprint would be easy for some under some circumstances they would require some type of energy expenditure as well as cost money. There is an easy way that requires little to no effort and will offset the carbon footprint of a single person by ten percent. The way is to hire a Christmas tree.
When you buy a Christmas tree it is discarded and nothing of value is gained. But hiring a Christmas tree has the opposite effect. There is no energy required to be expended. Your hired Christmas tree is delivered just in time for the holiday and reclaimed after Christmas. The delivery process alone reduces your carbon footprint. Hired Christmas trees are delivered in groups of twenty by a single vehicle as opposed to twenty individual vehicles on the road, driven by individuals set out to buy twenty Christmas trees. A hired Christmas tree is a very well maintained tree that does not die. It is planted out after you have gotten your use out of it. At this stage it becomes available for enjoyment by animals and nature aficionados. In addition, a hired Christmas tree that is planted out will offset a carbon footprint by ten percent or one tonne of carbon. Eight million people buy a Christmas tree every year in the United Kingdom. Eight million hired Christmas trees would equal an eight million tonne offset carbon footprint. As stated earlier, when you buy a Christmas tree nothing of value is gained but when you hire a Christmas tree nothing of value is lost.
To offset your entire carbon footprint you will need to be determined and make several changes that may be somewhat uncomfortable or unfamiliar at first. However one way to get you in the right direction of offsetting your carbon footprint without altering your life in any way is to hire a Christmas tree. When you hire a Christmas tree you adhere to a tradition without any extra cost or changing your routine while doing your part to offset your carbon footprint and keep the world clean and green for you and everyone else.
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