Creating a relaxing, restful outdoor space can make a world of difference if you lead a busy life. Retiring to your own outdoor oasis can be the perfect tonic for work stress and conflict. This is echoed by the Royal Horticultural Society, which found that folks who spend time in the garden report 6.6% higher well-being scores and 4.2% lower stress.
However, if you’ve recently drawn up blueprints for your home’s exterior space, you may be concerned about how your landscaping will impact the environment. Removing trees and installing pools may declutter your space, but it will infringe on the ecosystem that calls your yard home.
Instead of concreting over your back lawn, utilize sustainable, non-invasive upgrades. This will protect local wildlife and reduce your carbon footprint. An eco-friendly approach can help you feel at one with nature, too, as hedgehogs and birds are far more likely to enjoy your outdoor space if you build it with their needs in mind.
Eco-Friendly Features
Rather than planning your outdoor oasis around swimming pools and patios, consider foregrounding eco-friendly features. This places a priority on the natural world and helps you meld your passion for sustainability with your interest in supporting the local environment. Foregrounding eco-friendly features can help guide your design choices and make your outdoor space feel like a true oasis. When planning your outdoor space, account for key details like:
- Purpose: How do you want different areas to serve your needs? Do you need a space for seating and an area for gardening? Giving each space a purpose gives the yard a sense of unity and utility.
- Entertaining: When you have folks over, where will they gather? Using this insight, position your eco-friendly focal features in areas where folks can see them easily and appreciate your design. Be sure to light this area properly using solar-powered path lights.
- Planting: If you have a green thumb, create a blueprint of your planting scheme. This will help you choose flowers and shrubs that suit your soil, get enough sunlight, and support the local bees and butterflies. Planting in this way minimizes the energy needed to support your yard and maximizes your chances of enjoying a big bloom.
- Landscaping: You’ll probably need to adjust elements of your yard’s landscape when making your own oasis. Streamline the process by identifying focal points that use color, texture, and height to create interest.
When making these changes, make sustainability a central part of your decision-making process. For example, if you would like a patio, consider using reclaimed stones and slabs to create your space. This gives you a solid surface for sustainable aluminum planters and minimizes the environmental impact of your renovation.
If you have the space, consider installing features like bug hotels and ponds. This turns your yard into a space that can support almost any form of local wildlife. Bug hotels — which are commonly made from old wood — attract all kinds of critters, while ponds give animals a welcome reprieve from the heat. Just be sure to place them far away from the home to minimize the risk of creepy crawlies entering your house.
Plant Placement
Designing a garden with nature in mind will minimize the impact that your yard has on the ecosystem. However, if you really want to support the local wildlife, you should make strategic use of flowers and shrubs. This ensures that pollinators have plenty of nectar to utilize and will bring your garden to life when the spring and summer roll around.
When planning your garden, start by assessing the sunlight your exterior space receives. Keep track of how much sun a planter is likely to get and align your plant selection with the amount of light in the area.
Next, take a step back and consider the wider landscape. If you live near foothills or woodlands, make sure your planting complements the natural world beyond the borders of your garden.
This approach to planting is called “Shakkei” and is a great way to make your yard feel at one with the world around you. Embracing Shakkei can help you make plant placement choices that create a greenbelt of plants that suit the existing ecosystem and support the wildlife that may come into your yard.
Resilient Gardening
Renovating your yard to create an outdoor oasis is perfect if you want a private area to relax and unwind after a long day at the office. However, data collected by NASA suggests that storms are becoming more frequent. This means that your oasis must be resilient if you want it to last in the long term. Building a resilient garden is eco-friendly, too, as resilient yards tend to use less water and require minimal upkeep.
You can use your yard to protect your house against extreme weather by installing storm-resistant pipes while landscaping your yard. This is key if you’re already bringing in excavators to alter or flatten your garden or install terraced gardens. Consider bringing in a few water collection devices at this time, too, as this will minimize the amount of tap water you need to use during a drought.
Conclusion
Transforming your home’s exterior space into an oasis shouldn’t undermine the local ecosystem. Instead, foreground the natural world’s needs by installing bug hotels and utilizing Shakkei. This will bring balance to your yard design and help you create an oasis for humans and animals alike.
