How to Regenerate Your Backyard
We all like to have a pretty home and garden, but pretty isn’t always best for the environment. The separate, manicured gardens around our homes aren’t very good for biodiversity and chemicals frequently used are even worse! One way to improve your local habitat and help with the fight against climate change is by using regenerative gardening methods. If you want to know how to regenerate your home and garden, take a look at our suggestions to growing a regenerative backyard and garden.
The Benefits Of Regenerating your Home and Garden
The loss of natural habitats through industrialization and mass production agriculture has been devastating to our environment. Vital pollinating insects and wildlife are in severe decline because they don't have anywhere to live anymore. When you regenerate your garden, you can help your local nature thrive when you provide a safe, hospitable environment around your home and garden.
Provide natural habitats for bugs, plants, & animals
Lower maintenance needs
Support pollinator habitats & bee populations
Sequester carbon in root systems & soil
How To Regenerate Your Garden
Regenerating isn't a case of letting your garden go wild because dominant plants will quickly take over. Instead, you create wild areas and provide plenty of places where insects and creatures can hide. To make the most effective regenerative garden, learn about local ecology and habitats and mimic these.
If you want to know how to regenerate your garden, take a look at the steps below.
Compost
If you don't have a compost system in your home, set one up. A compost heap will provide a banquet for insects, and the insects will make a banquet for birds. In return, you get some fantastic plant food, and you will also reduce your kitchen waste.
Visit our article on composting here for easy how tos.
Less Pruning and Mowing
Don't be so rigid with your garden. Instead of weekly pruning and mowing, let your lawn and plants grow long. Don’t cut plants back before winter & leave leaf piles. The dead foliage provides shelter for birds and insects during the winter.
Reduce the size of your lawn and put wild borders around its edges. Many animals and bugs will live in these habitats, even if they are small.
Finally, instead of digging your garden each year, try no-till gardening with layers of mulch to improve the quality of your soil. If you are not familiar with no dig/no till techniques, learn more here.
Encourage Wild, Local Plants
Take a look around and see what native or local plants you have in your garden and encourage these to grow (or do some quick internet searching!).
Don’t be so quick to cut back weeds. Weeds such as dandelions are very beneficial to wildlife and humans in many health benefits and ecological ones.
Include plants that attract pollinators and some that grow all year round. Leave corners in your garden completely wild or make a mini meadow.
Attract Bees
There are over 200 species of solitary bee and, as the name suggests, they live alone, although in truth they often nest close to one another. Pollinators, including solitary bees, carry out a vital role in pollinating our crops, and also flowers and trees.
Because solitary bees do not have a store of honey to protect they are non-aggressive, meaning they are safe around pets and children. The males generally have no sting and the females will only sting if handled roughly or trod on. Perfect therefore to encourage into your garden or allotment or new build development.
There are many factors in declining solitary bee numbers, including increased use of chemicals in farming, fewer wildflower meadows, and less suitable habitat. As fields become bigger we lose more hedgerows, which used to provide ample homes to a wide range of wildlife. Also as we build more and more properties and landscape our gardens we unwittingly destroy habitat and nests as we do so.
Add a bee hotel for these solitary bees to your yard!
Utilize Your Space
You can make any growing space more effective with companion planting techniques or a food forest. A good example of companion planting comes from the Native Americans and is known as “The Three Sisters”. The sisters are corn beans and squash, which grow together comfortably in a small space.
With a food forest, you can grow food in every direction. Starting with small fruit trees as the canopy, followed by bushes, vines and roots. The result is a dense area of edible vegetation for you and the local wildlife to enjoy.
Learn more about food forests here.
Make it Creature Friendly
Do not use pesticides in your home or garden. Pesticides keep insects out, but with a regenerative garden, you want to encourage insects and all their benefits.
Place bird feeders in your garden, as well as bat, bird and insect boxes for them to live in. With birds, bats and predatory insects around, you don't need pesticides anyway. Read our article on bat benefits here.
To really attract nature and boost your local environment, add a water feature to your garden, such as a birdbath or pond.
Use hedges rather than fences where birds and insects can thrive.
If you have solid fences, cut a small hole where hedgehogs and other migrating wild animals can pass through.
Start a Food Forest
Ready to do a full transformation? Grow food in your backyard!
Food forests take all of the methods above and also provide food right from your backyard.
Click the image to learn more about how amazing a food forest can be on any scale!
Learn more about food forests.
Bonus!
Check out our interview with Axe & Root Homestead. She does an amazing job at explaining how she designed the systems she created and why. Use her knowledge to create your own perfect backyard farmstead.
Conclusion
It’s easy to regenerate your home and garden, and both you and the environment can reap the rewards. To create a welcoming environment where the local environment can thrive, cut down on pruning, tilling and mowing and don't use pesticides. You can also put up bird feeders, nesting boxes and bat houses to encourage biodiversity around your home.