If you own a beautiful lawn in Missouri, then you must be having the pressure to maintain or preserve its beauty even if it means hiring a top-notch lawn care services company like St Louis Lawn Care. Protecting the environment has become very important in today’s society and the responsibility starts with you taking care of your lawn to ensure an eco-friendly backyard. By incorporating eco-friendly landscaping design and maintenance into your landscaping ideas to help save the environment and deliver a stunningly beautiful yard that will be cost-effective and simple to maintain. Below are top eco-friendly landscaping ideas for your lawn.
1. Native Plants
You can’t go wrong with trees and plants when it comes to landscaping. Just ensure that you choose flora native to your region, as native plants and trees not only grow effortlessly in their area but also attract and provide a natural habitat for butterflies, birds, and other animals part of the beneficial local wildlife. They are also well acclimatized to the local weather and climate, including rainfall amounts. Besides, well-established native plants and trees are very easy to maintain because they are naturally more resistant to local pests that cause diseases and do not require fertilizers and pesticides to thrive. You also don’t have to perform supplemental watering, making it easier and cheaper for you to maintain them and the eco-friendly environment.
2. Consider compositing
Have you thought about introducing compositing to your lawn or yard? Composting reduces the burden of garbage produced but can also produce free, natural fertilizer. Making your own compost is really easy, as all you need is soil, warmth, and to live in a partly sunny area. You can choose to either install a compost bin on-site or have the pile out of sight. Once you have selected your designated area, mix your garden and household waste over time to allow the compost to develop.
Some of the waste materials to use include vegetable scraps, newspapers, weds, wood shavings, sawdust, cardboard, and more. This mix will form a good environment for compost-making bugs. Within 6-9 months of throwing household and garden waste in the designated area, you will have rich and well-developed, nutritious compost ready. Note that you’re discouraged from discarding animal scraps into the compost. You can readily use your compost once the 6-9-month period has elapsed.
3. Apply natural pest control methods and use natural herbicides
Pests and weeds can destroy your beautiful lawn or garden and you need to effectively control them as much as possible to minimize the potential damage. As a result, many people turn to pesticides as a way of controlling pests not knowing that they contain chemicals that can have a detrimental effect on both health and the surrounding environment. The chemicals used to make pesticides can often cause serious health issues and some have even been linked to the notable reduction of the bee population. Therefore, should you choose to use pesticides to control pests, ensure you use them in their natural form so that you minimize the potential damage to the environment and yourself. Natural methods include physically uprooting weeds and attracting beneficial insects. Natural pesticides such as oil sprays and insecticidal soaps for aphids, mealybugs, and mites are also encouraged.
4. Consider ground cover rather than grass
While grass is often a preferred choice when it comes to growing a beautiful lawn, ground cover presents many more advantages over grass. To begin with, it hugs the ground better and requires minimal mowing, watering, or pesticides. When growing a lawn, you don’t want to plant something that will require too much attention and money to maintain. Pesticides, mowing and additional watering can take a lot of money out of your pocket or waste your time if you decide to pay close attention. If you live in a shady area, consider moss because it remains green even in extremely hot weather conditions but will still feel great under bare feet.
5. Organic Mulch
This particular option has often been considered by many homeowners who are looking to have a beautiful lawn while also maintaining an eco-friendly environment. Organic mulch includes things like wood chips, tree bark, pine needles, and leaves and these have a wide range of benefits to the environment, including regulating soil temperature and retaining soil moisture, thereby helping to keep your plants healthy. Also, if you want to inhibit weed growth in your garden or flowerbed, you may want to consider mulching as this is a very effective measure. This technique is often considered because it permits easier weeding and adds nutrients to the soil as it breaks down.
6. Utilize terraces on slopes
Steep slopes can be challenging to mow and maintain as they can cause soil erosion and even extreme stormwater runoff, which are major environmental concerns. By using terracing as a technique to manage soil erosion and runoff, you can make your lawn beautiful while maintaining an eco-friendly environment. Terracing entails levelling off different segments of a steep slope to ensure relative flatness and planting trees and vegetation to cover the ground and prevent erosion. The flat, planted areas provide level ground for rainwater to soak into the beds rather than allowing it to run down the slope and take large chunks of soil with it. Note that these can be costly to install but they provide aesthetic appeal and additional benefits to the landscape.
These terrific landscaping ideas will not only make your lawn more beautiful but it will definitely help to maintain an eco-friendly environment. However, please note that landscaping can be technical and often requires an expert with the knowledge and skills to perform the job correctly and to any requested specifications. If you have little to no knowledge of landscaping, it is highly advisable that you hire a landscaping company to do the job for you because they have a better understanding of the climate, soil type, and other factors that help in selecting what to plant or grow on your lawn.
Article Submitted By Community Writer
