Background
What is ecological gardening?
Gardening with nature instead of against it. No pesticides, plenty of pollinators.
Gardening with nature
Ecological gardening means treating your garden as a living system instead of a backdrop. You pick plants that feed bees, butterflies, birds and soil life. You disturb the soil as little as possible and keep materials in the cycle: leaves become mulch, prunings feed the compost, seeds get saved for next year. It's not all-or-nothing: a wild corner in an ordinary garden already counts.
The principles in a nutshell
Five rules of thumb keep coming back. One: choose native and pollinator-friendly plants over ornamentals that offer no nectar. Two: build your soil with mulch and compost instead of digging. Three: leave a corner wild for shelter and overwintering. Four: reuse what the garden gives you (leaves, prunings, rainwater). Five: skip pesticides and herbicides; your garden solves a lot on its own once you give it time.
Why native plants matter so much
Native plants and local insects co-evolved over thousands of years. A common European bumblebee knows what to do with a wild rose; with a double-flowered ornamental rose that holds no pollen, it doesn't. Same goes for caterpillars, beetles and soil life: they depend on the plants that belong here. Non-natives can have their place, but build the backbone of your garden from local species. Ivy for the late nectar, hawthorn for the birds, nettles for peacock butterfly caterpillars: small choices, big difference.
A garden that belongs to its region
The right choices don't just boost biodiversity, they reinforce the regional landscape. A hawthorn hedge belongs in hedgerow country, pollarded willows along a ditch in the polder, lean-grassland flowers on the sandy soils of the Campine. Choosing plants and structures that belong here adds to the character of the landscape around your garden. A genuinely ecological garden never looks the same everywhere: it looks like its region.
How do you measure progress?
Gardiflora gives every plant an Eco-Score for what it does for pollinators, birds and soil life. Your whole garden gets a score from 0 to 100, built from five criteria. So you see not just what you're doing, but what nature thinks of it. Curious? Read how the Eco-Score works.
