What is a sustainable garden?

A sustainable garden maximizes beauty and functionality while minimizing environmental impact.  Natural Gardens specializes in creating and installing gardens that enhance your home's style and natural surroundings, while at the same time improving air and water quality and saving energy, water, and money.  To achieve this, Natural Gardens recommends a variety of earth-friendly techniques and tools, including:

Selecting the right plants:
By combining stunning, low-maintenance California native plants with other appropriate species; Natural Gardens creates plant palettes that welcome birds, butterflies, and other important pollinators into your garden.  Choosing the right plants starts with a thorough analysis of your home's unique micro-climates, soil, and myriad other characteristics.  Proper plant selection also assures a comfortable garden experience that optimizes sun and shade, fragrance, color, and touch.

Growing edibles:
Tasty and nutritious, there's no better place than home to grow some of your food.  Let Leita show you how easy and satisfying it is to grow a bumper crop of your favorites, while reducing trips to the grocery store.

Using mulch:
A blanket of mulch over bare soil saves water, improves soil quality, and snuffs weeds.  It also gives your garden a finished, polished look.  Natural Gardens accesses mulch that is appropriate for your garden and your taste, and assures that it is applied correctly.

Composting:
Compost is the best, and often only, amendment needed to optimize soil health. Let Leita show you how easy it is to get started, or guide you to the best sources for those wanting to purchase it from a supplier.

Irrigating wisely:
To assure that every plant in your garden gets just the right drink of water, Natural Gardens recommends the most water-efficient irrigation systems.  These include drip, micro-sprayer, and pop up sprinklers, among other techniques. 

Replacing lawns:
Conventional lawns gulp water at an alarming rate and require significant, expensive maintenance.  Whether you require a usable surface, transformation to a meadow, or a host of other lawn alternatives, Leita specializes in lawn replacements that meet your needs while saving resources and money. 

Avoiding power tools:
To reduce air and noise pollution, she recommends hand tools instead of power tools.  Natural Gardens installers use rakes and brooms instead of leaf blowers, and hand clippers instead of string trimmers.

Installing permeable surfaces:
Paths and patios often create the vital structure of the garden.  Assuring these surfaces allow water to percolate is a key design feature. She works with your home's unique topography to assure that rainwater runoff is minimized.  This keeps our streams and bay healthy, and can also provide sources of water catchment. 

Saving energy:
A properly designed garden reduces energy costs.  Natural Gardens looks to enhance your home with energy-slashing measures, including correct shade tree placement, solar solutions, and the use of LED lights to illuminate pathways.

Avoiding chemicals:
Well-designed gardens do not require chemical fertilization, pest, or weed control.  Natural Gardens creates gardens that effortlessly provide the proper balance necessary to maintain garden health.