You are sleek, city, and sophisticated, but you also care about the environment… you are Ecopolitan. What does the Ecopolitan garden need? Green tactics, urban style, and often, beginner tips to hone skills in mastering gardening within restricted spaces.
Add wind, reflected heat from concrete surfaces, and pollution to the list. Besides being earth-friendly, being neighbor-friendly is important, too. It sounds like a big order, but it is just a creative challenge…something many city smart people are good at handling.
Tackling the Challenge One Step At A Time
Green Tactics
You are already living more green, here is the Ecopolitan list for the garden:
- Compost, but Neatly
- Water Conservation
- Best Plant Choices
- Phase Out Chemicals
You are an organic gardener on a small scale, so it is time to think of yourself that way. Your needs may be purely ornamental, or time saving and low maintenance, or supplementing your grocery list with home grown produce… but your skills are every bit as green and productive as the organic farmer you decided to buy from at a the local farm market.
Urban Style
Urban gardeners can choose any style they want, although they are usually working with less space than many traditional gardens featured in their coffee table garden books. Those books are great for inspiration! Just remember to edit the choices of features and plant size and you are good to go.
If your schedule limits your outdoor efforts, take that into account and keep the design clean, simple, and easy to care for. Thomas Church was a sublime designer whose city garden plans were an inspiration. He wrote “Gardens are for People” which is still a mantra for today. Make your garden urban savvy by:
- Unifying the house with the garden
- Creating spaces that function for your needs and desires
- Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
- Scale the design to the space and the elements
Beginner Tips
Start with good basic tools- it makes all the jobs easier. Here is a list of tools you need for the jobs you anticipate, Basic Tools.
Start small and start easy, A Starter Food Garden, or Herb Garden.
Your soil is the foundation for everything else- easy ways to improve it: 5 Tips for clay - A Better Garden
Easy Organic methods:
1) Compost your vegetables and leaf waste. More on this later. Check out “Bokashi composting“.
2) Use some simple companion plant pairs.
3) Get some good bugs…see what they are here.
4) Get Your Plan On… 5 point plan
Summed up:
- Start one garden area at a time
- Get a few good basic tools
- Create Good Soil
- Implement a few organic methods
Since I began gardening in an urban setting… look for more to come in this series.
More About….
Thomas Church
Church’s Garden Plan, Sullivan garden
