FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Face it: the classic suburban lawn is an ecological disaster. Grooming that expanse of velvety green grass typically involves pesticides, herbicides and plenty of water through summer’s hottest months, not to mention the oil and gasoline needed to fuel the lawn mower. Now, just in time for Earth Day, there’s help for eco-warrior wannabes who want some green space at home (and time to enjoy it). 

“Doing your bit for the environment doesn’t mean donning tie-dye and chaining yourself to the nearest panda,” said Carl Smith, a landscape architecture professor at the University of Arkansas School of Architecture and first author of the new book Residential Landscape Sustainability: A Checklist Tool (Blackwell Publishing, 2008). “We all know what we can do in the house – for example using low-energy light bulbs. What may be less obvious is what we can do literally around the house – in the yard, the garden or the driveway.”

Here, in his own words, are Carl Smith’s top ten tips for greening your garden:

1. Plant trees. If you have the room, trees can provide protection for your house from hot sun and cold winds, reducing winter heating and summer air-conditioning. Planting trees and larger shrubs in the right place can help you save up to a quarter of your energy bills! Of course trees also help provide habitat for bird and insects and, just as importantly, make our human habitat that bit more attractive too – studies have shown yard trees can have a significant impact on how attractive your property and the street appears.

2. Think natural. Common sense tells us that the more processing a building product goes through, the more energy and potential pollution is likely to be involved in its manufacture. When adding surfacing or features to the lot, remember that naturally occurring materials such as timber, stone and aggregate will tend to have had less environmental impact than metals, plastics, bricks and cement.

3. Think local (and check the label). A naturally occurring material is not automatically the ‘green’ choice. Ask your supplier where materials come from – natural stone trucked from hundreds of miles away may be no better for the environment than a concrete block manufactured just down the road. Look for timber that is local and certified as being from a sustainable source – Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) stamped is reckoned to be the most reliable.

4. Diversify plantings. Native plants drive global biodiversity and can be a great environmental feature in your garden – especially if you live near an existing native habitat that you can help to protect and extend. However, research is showing that non-invasive, non-native plants can also be attractive to many bugs and beasties.

5. Design for re-use. Whether because it’s looking old and tired, or simply because you want to spruce things up a bit, from time to time you may want to remove, replace or repair garden items such as decks, fences and areas of hardscape. Using screws and bolts rather than nails to secure timbers, or lime mortar or sand to bed paving rather than cement, can allow you to easily dismantle and reuse, rather than smash and dump (though, admittedly, it’s less fun).

6. Hail to the heap. A garden compost heap made up of veggie waste from the kitchen, as well as the leaves, cuttings and branches from yard work can be rotted down over time to provide a ready resource of soil improver. What’s more, as much as one in five truckloads of waste trucked to U.S. landfills could find a home on a compost heap instead.

7. Think in layers. To attract the maximum biodiversity to your yard, you should use several layers of plants – ground covers, shrubs, larger shrubs and, of course, trees.

8. Hedge your bets. Housing, like all types of extended development areas, can divide areas of natural value such as woodland and grasslands. Rather than build a fence, plant a hedge and help provide a ‘green corridor’ for animals to move through your neighborhood and between fragmented green areas. And if you don’t like the neighbor you can always let your hedge grow tall.

9. Harvest rainwater. Avoid using drinking standard water from the main supply. Plants would normally get their water from rainfall – so why not disconnect the down-pipe from the [storm drains] and introduce a rain barrel that stores roof-water for when rain is scarce?

10. Find beauty in chaos. A garden design that requires every plant to survive exactly where it was planted and never grow beyond a certain size, and is easily ruined by opportunistic invaders (weeds) will require you to spend lots of time and energy in the garden. Choose plants carefully to match your soil, weather conditions and their location (remember that exotic plants may be just as well suited to your garden as natives), and they will need less water and fertilizer (which can require a lot of energy to manufacture). Also, by being a little less pedantic about keeping every plant in line, looser designs can allow some plants to fail and (gasp) some to come in without ruining the overall effect. Herbicide and water use would decrease, there’d be less weed pulling for you – allowing more time to spend in that hammock strung between your shade trees.