Your garden can be a total body experience. Grow flowers for your eyes, trees to cool your skin, grasses that swoosh for your ears, moss and soft garden paths for your feet, vegetables and fruit for your innards, and plenty of digging and pruning to tone your muscles. This is healthy living. Important too, is how you keep your garden in good physical shape. Practice IPM (Integrated Pest Management) which is a philosophy of using the least toxic insect or disease control first, like a blast from a garden hose. You want to strike a balance of nature so you don’t have to weigh in with heavier methods. When you apply poisons, you kill everything.
Learn to tolerate damage in the garden. This is the only way you will allow the good bugs to move in and take over the bad bugs. An injured leaf might have been supper for a beautiful butterfly in its caterpillar form. We can be smug in our green worlds, pointing out the not so perfect leaf with a chewed hole as a badge of honor and courage. Remember, too, to be earth friendly in your choice of fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers feed your plants and give them quick boosts to flower, fruit and even grow. However, they don’t help the soil. Compost and natural products help build up soil nutrients and tilth. After a while, chemicals will damage the soil to the point that nothing will grow in it. Think about the earth. Think Green.
By Barbara Schneider, Gibbs Gardens
Photos courtesy of Gibbs Gardens
Gibbs Gardens' Inspiration Garden was designed especially for home Gardners. And, it provides great plant ideas throughout. click here. to read the article.
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