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.
Eight things that make a garden wilder
Every move below is in the drawing, and they all count towards your Eco-Score.
- 1
Dig a pond
Water brings in life faster than anything you can plant. Dragonflies and newts find it on their own, and birds come to drink. A sunken barrel works too.
Habitat & Shelter - 2
Shrink the lawn
Keep grass where you sit or play and turn the rest into a wildflower meadow or herb-rich lawn. That gives you nectar all summer.
Pollination - 3
Plant a hedge instead of a fence
A hedge gives birds somewhere to nest and shelter from bad weather. Panels do not. Hawthorn, hornbeam and ivy all work.
Habitat & Shelter - 4
Leave dead wood
Stack prunings into a dead hedge rather than hauling them away. Hedgehogs overwinter inside and beetles live off the rotting wood.
Habitat & Shelter - 5
Feed your soil
Start a compost bin and mulch your beds with leaves and compost. As long as you do not dig, the soil builds itself.
Soil health - 6
Choose native plants
Native plants and local insects evolved together. A double ornamental rose with no pollen feeds nobody.
Biodiversity - 7
Offer places to nest
Put up a nest box and a bee hotel in a sunny spot. Leave a patch of bare sandy ground as well, for the bees that nest underground.
Pollination - 8
Clear invasive species
Species like Japanese knotweed crowd out the plants that already struggle here. Taking them out frees up space straight away.
Ecological risks
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. So plant ivy for the late nectar, hawthorn for the birds and nettles for peacock butterfly caterpillars.
A garden that belongs to its region
The right choice also fits the landscape of your region. 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. So an ecological garden in the Campine looks different from one in the polder.
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 can see what your garden does for nature. Curious? Read how the Eco-Score works.
