Creating a more sustainable garden

Growing your own herbs and vegetables can be a fun and satisfying pastime, and it has many benefits for our planet: those food crops require less packaging, less transportation to your door, and less energy for refrigeration and storage.

Tips for reducing waste

Compost is a great soil improver - it provides nutrients and increases the soil's ability to conserve water. Instead of buying compost in plastic bags, you can make your own compost (see our Home Composting page). If you need to buy a large quantity of compost, consider having it delivered by truck and emptied directly onto your yard, to avoid the need for unnecessary packaging. 

Some garden retailers now accept used plastic plants pots, labels and stakes, which are then recycled. Refer to the Mitre10 and Bunnings recycling pages where you will find details of which items will be accepted at those retail stores. Your local Council tip shop may be happy to accept used plant pots and trays.

You can make your own plant labels by cutting an ice cream container lid into strips and labelling with a permanent parker. You can wash and re-use wooden iceblock sticks as plant labels. The cardboard inner tube from toilet rolls can be used as pots for growing seedlings. Simply plant the whole tube in the ground when the seedling inside is big enough and the cardboard will naturally rot away.

Try propagating your plants

You can reduce the number of plant pots you purchase if you propagate some plants yourself. Some plants can be divided into pieces, for example daylilies, irises and rhubarb. Penstemons, salvias, pelargoniums and many others can be grown from cuttings snipped from the parent plant. After the fruiting season, strawberry plants produce plantlets known as "runners" - when these have rooted into the soil they can be snipped from the parent plant and transplanted elsewhere. 

Growing from seed means you can re-use the same seedling trays or punnets year after year. Some flowers and vegetable crops are easy to propagate if you save seed each year, for example calendulas, sunflowers, tomatoes and runner beans. Note that seeds saved from a parent plant whose seeds were  marked as "hybrid" or F1 are unlikely to produce plants which resemble the parent plant. Save seeds from open-pollinated (non-hybrid) varieties if you want to retain the characteristics of the parent plant (some older varieties passed down through the generations are known as "heirlooms").

Design for the future

Good planning and design will reduce the environmental impact of your garden. Grow plants that thrive in your area. Check out the neighbours' gardens to see what grows well in your local climate. Consider factors within your own garden - which parts of the garden drain water quickly and tend to be dry, and which parts tend to remain damp and boggy? How much sun does each part of the garden receive? By choosing suitable plants for each part of your garden your plants should be healthier and require less intervention to keep them alive (which means fewer plastic spray bottles!) and you will need to replace your plants less often. 

Buy good quality tools if you can afford them, as these will last for many years. Look in second hand stores for robust, pre-loved gardening tools. Clean and dry your tools after each use to keep them in good condition and extend their lifespan. You may be able to hire larger items such as shredders from your local hire store (this supports our circular economy). Use the shredded material as mulch around your garden to help with water retention, so you don’t have to water the plants as often.