One of the reasons gardening has started to become so popular in recent years is because people are becoming more aware of problems with our environment. And many are concerned with the overuse of harsh chemicals, pesticides, and other things which are harmful not only to the environment, but to human beings as well.

So not only is gardening becoming popular by itself, but “green” gardening - or environmentally friendly gardening - is one of the primary goals for most hobby and home gardeners.

Now of course the most obvious first step involved with environmentally friendly gardening is to stop using dangerous chemicals for controlling pests, reducing weeds, and fertilizing grass, trees, bushes, food, and flowers. Since many people have grown up with these methods for gardening though, they’re not quite sure how to go about doing these standard chores in a more natural, earth and people friendly way. So here we’ll look at several basics:

1. Composting. Composting is an all natural way to get rich, fertile soil for your flowers, trees, bushes, vegetables and fruits, lawn grass, and anything else you might want to grow naturally. Compost is basically what nature makes on it’s own, when no human interferance is involved. Leaves fall to the ground and slowly decompose. Animal droppings are left where they fall and these decompose too. The wind, rain, heat, and cold all work to mix these decomposing natural items together, and this eventually creates a rich, fertile soil base for new plants to grow in.

People create compost themselves, by simply recycling any organic materials from their home. These include fruit and vegetable scraps from the kitchen, used tea and coffee grounds, shredded paper, wood chips and fireplace ash, grass clippings, dead leaves, and any other natural organic material that is regularly found around the house.

2. Companion Planting. Companion planting is a natural way to control many diseases, pests and bugs in your yard and garden. There are natural combinations of plants which, when planted in close proximity to each other, will naturally help repel standard pests or other common problems. Sometimes companion plants are used to simply improve the flavors of one or both vegetables when they’re planted close together, but companion planting is quite useful as a natural pest control method too, so it’s well worth learning as much as you can about.

3. Gray Water. Using gray water is an environmentally friendly gardening method, because it allows you to conserve the amount of water you’re using for your gardens and yard areas, instead of simply wasting it. Gray water is a form of recycling: You simply reroute certain drainage areas of your home into the yard and garden areas, so each time you shower for instance, or wash a load of cloths, instead of the water going into the sewer system it will instead be routed to your plants.

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