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Natural garden ideas and pictures
A garden is a cultivated nature, a space that can only come about through human technology. Without human intervention, it is not a garden. This also applies to the natural or wild garden. But what sets him apart from the traditional garden are the goals and methods. Natural gardens should increase biodiversity and offer many habitats for animals and plants.
contents
- All structures are included
- Natural garden is not called private garden
- The idea of the natural garden
- The romantic wilderness
- The farmers garden
- Garden against wilderness
- Well maintained wilderness
- The eco garden
- Some exotics help animals
- The animal friendly garden
- Watch out for food plants
- nesting boxes
- An oasis
- The city becomes colorful
- Garden as a therapy
- Flowered plants
- Constructive energy
- model habitats
- Light water pond and heaps of leaves
- Better than television
- The marsh bed
- Plants for bees and butterflies
- Food for birds and other animals
- The herb garden
- Edible "weeds"
- Plan a game garden
- Create a natural garden
- The principles of the natural garden
- Literature:
All structures are included
For this purpose, all structures are included: green roofs, hedges for example with blackthorn or hawthorn, walls made of layered stones, deadwood, compost, old trees, even the gravel or stone paths.
A garden is a retreat from the stress of everyday life and worries. Image: VRD - fotolia The natural garden is not exactly a dynamic nature. The gardener rather tries to create an (artificial) balance. He pushes back dominant species such as blackberries, he places attractive flowering plants in exposed locations for humans, and he uses the natural enemies of those species that threaten the species he desires to have in the garden.
Natural garden is not called private garden
They are not limited to private gardens. Road edges, traffic islands, even tree grates and green strips next to pedestrian paths are just as suitable as industrial and commercial areas.
The idea of the natural garden
Today, a natural garden is primarily a garden for native plants, which also provides a habitat for rare animal species, but at the same time is cherished and cultivated as a garden.
Although the historical natural or wild garden was also a carefully designed "wilderness", in the 19th century it was not about the protection of native wild plants, because before the industrialization they were still everywhere and in large quantities.
Instead, wild gardeners cultivated exotic plants, combined them with native ones, and created a harmonious-looking ensemble that was supposed to be "informal" in order to bring nature to fruition.
These wild gardens broke with the strict geometrical forms of the Baroque, which symbolized, like the whip of the Löwendompteus, that humans dominated nature, plants and animals.
The romantic wilderness
William Robinson (1838-1935), an Irish gardener developed the concept of these free gardens. His book "The Wild Garden" from 1870 is still considered the standard work of the natural garden. Robinson wrote: "I want to show that we can perhaps bring out the beauty of our diverse, hardy flowers even better than the enthusiastic followers of the old horticultural style dream: namely, by having countless, beautiful wild plants of many different countries in our forests and woodlands, into the less carefully landscaped and maintained parts of parks and on the unused land of almost all garden species. "
The first gardens according to Robinson's proposals corresponded to Farngärten and grottos. They were a rural contrast to the precisely laid out beds and served for recreation.
Robinson deliberately used plants that were then considered not "good enough" for the trimmed gardens of the upper class, including the peony, the larkspur and the lily.
Robinson's idea prevailed. The "romantic wilderness" became an integral part of the urban gardens and parks. However, favorite plants of the then "wild gardeners" such as magnolias, rhodendrons or laurel rose among today's purists of Ökogartens as no-go, because they are exotic, which provide little food for native insects or birds.
The farmers garden
Another pioneer was Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). She loved the by the upper class at that time regarded as inferior farm gardens, which today people who buy old farmhouses with much effort to rebuild.
Example from a cottage garden. Picture: hochfeld -fotolia What was new about her model, however, was that it combined and aesthetically reconciled exotic garden plants and peasant flowers. In doing so, she warned against randomly putting together plants that firstly had different requirements and secondly did not convey a harmonious picture.
She wrote: "Thoughtless people easily come to the wrong conclusion that you can transplant any garden plant into any pristine landscape. I have already seen a number of forest areas, which were already perfect in their charming simplicity, but were subsequently defaced by the thoughtless planting of new species. "
But she wanted to create a smooth transition. Forest and garden should no longer be strictly separated, an idea that also characterizes today's natural garden. She wrote: "A few mullein candles here, a few thimbles there, because it is nice, if even in the adjacent forest influences of the garden can still be seen. In this way, the two can be connected so harmoniously. "
Garden against wilderness
Crucial is that Robinson and Jekyll garden was no longer against nature as in the stately homes of the 18th century. Anyone visiting the Baroque and Rococo gardens today, as in Versailles, Sanscoussi or Hannover Herrenhausen, recognizes this essential difference.
The hedged hedges, the sculptures and pavilions, and the flowerbeds in the shape of stars, circles, curves or squares, do not allow for wild growth. They are in deliberate opposition to the meadows, forests or swamps that were still ubiquitous when these parks of the rulers emerged.
Here it should become clear that man is shaping. The absolutist rulers in France, for example, explicitly arranged Versailles to demonstrate the god-king's power over culture, animals in the menagerie, and plants in the parks.
In harmony: the natural garden. Image: Christine Kuchem-fotolia Well maintained wilderness
But Gertrude Jekyll's contribution to the modern garden was not to "leave everything to itself". On the contrary, she introduced the farmer garden to gardening.
The cottage gardens were furnished according to aspects of utility. A central path with branches served to easily reach the planted herbs. The farmers planted vegetables as well as medicinal and aromatic herbs. To limit the garden, they stacked stones to dry stone walls.
Sage, wormwood and thyme, borage and chives, fennel or mint bloomed well and provided plenty of food for insects, but the farmers did not care for them for aesthetic or ecological reasons, but for consumption. For the same reason, they release Him, bromine, blueberries and strawberries thrive.
Flowering plants such as cornflower, willowherb or yarrow came by itself. In the shady places ferns and ivy settled. Hawthorn, blackthorn or rowan, wild cherry or holly offered natural hedges that the peasants cut into shapes.
In Jekyll's tradition, however, gardeners cultivated such cottage gardens and also planted exotic plants. But while the "gardeners" of the "real" gardeners were gardening because the farmers used these gardens for cooking and medicine, the wild gardeners of meticulous planning staged a seemingly untidiness - they did not let nature run wild, but professionally created the illusion of an aesthetic wilderness.
The eco garden
The romantic wilderness is definitely part of the idea. But unlike Jekyll's time, exotic species are frowned upon today. The garden is supposed to be a refuge for native animals and plants.
Thanks to intensive farming, many native field and meadow plants hardly ever survive today. Some have disappeared or are threatened with extinction.
Such eco-gardens are today an important resource for nature and species protection. In fact, the diversity of species in urban allotments today is greater than in the cleared agricultural landscape and urban garden parks even developed into a refuge for many species that came to Central Europe only in the course of the small-scale agriculture of the early modern age.
Some exotics help animals
However, many organic gardeners see the separation between exotic and native people too grim. For example, rhododendrons do not provide food for native animals, but they do hide and nest for birds; The most important food plant for birds in this country is the North American sunflower and the exotic Buddleia provides valuable food for butterflies. Fruit-eating birds love figs as well as apples.
The awareness of nature and species protection has grown in western countries in recent decades. Even the plaintiffs, who are poisoned by lethal injection, have long since ceased to be clichés.
Gardens can provide refuges for flowers that once grew everywhere, such as poppies or cornflowers. With careful preparation for example, open spaces in which no blackberries proliferate, native plants settle more and more of their own accord. Natural gardeners report about 300 native species on 400 square meters.
The animal friendly garden
Leafy perennial plants, climbing and creeping plants shelter animals. A dry wall of superimposed boulders is home to various insects, including the endangered wild bumblebee and bees. Sand lizards feel at ease here, birds find food.
Simple plants are vital to animals and often lack in "modern" garden. A shallow bowl serves as a birdbath. An open loam site provides nesting material for swallows and swifts.
A brushwood or dead woodpile is not an eyesore in the eco-garden, but vital for hedgehogs and mice, toads and newts, wasps, bees and bumblebees, wren and hedgeback.
Watch out for food plants
At home and exotic garden you should look carefully, which plants provide food for animals. For example, many butterflies and insects specialize in individual species: the American style of the foxglove, for example, can only use a fraction of the insects that control the native species.
Not only do old fruit trees provide starlings, thrushes, hedgehogs and insects with fruit, they also offer plenty of nesting possibilities, seating areas and flowers for nectar eaters. Typical species of open orchards, which are under serious threat today, include, for example, little owl and hoopoe.
Old fruit trees in the nature garden. Picture: hachri-fotolia nesting boxes
Take care of nesting and living boxes. They come in different sizes and with different Einfluglöchern for various species of birds: The threatened redstart prefers, for example, oval opening, tree runners need lateral slits, which they hatch in nature in tree caves, cabbage and blue tits use round Einfluglöcher in different sizes; Star boxes are larger and have larger holes due to the size of the birds. There are also boxes for woodland owls and kestrels, but their garden should have the appropriate size and at the Käuzen an old tree population.
At home, they can mount artificial nests for swallows as well as semi-caves for roan tails or sparrow boxes. Wrens need small boxes with semicircular openings: however, they are also served with a dense hedge.
There are also special boxes for bats, insect hotels, shelters for hedgehogs and other small mammals.
An oasis
A natural garden not only serves animals, but also recreation. He helps against stress and relaxes. Stylish gardens in which wild plants are sprayed away, a single grass species and two accurately cut trees demonstrate order, disappointing children in particular.
You notice intuitively: something is missing here. Moss, daisies, even here and there dandelions, are not weeds, but give the garden just this missing something. If you do without weed killers, you will soon discover that you are feeling well.
The city becomes colorful
You do not just have to "fritter away" your garden, you still have to decide which plants to find beautiful. Garden owners often do not even know about the beauty of native plants: a yellow-flowered broom enchants a barren gravel surface, fern sprouting from the wall of a backyard provides a mystical experience, mullein on a stone path bring color to the city.
Garden as a therapy
The therapeutic benefits can hardly be overestimated. The animals and plants bring particular joy to people who spend a lot of time at home: people with disabilities, the elderly and children.
Think of Harry Potter, the places glorified by the poets of romance: enchanted arbors, ivy-covered walls, or hidden ponds. Walled cloister gardens, fallow land inspired the imagination.
Flowered plants
In the natural garden, flowering shrubs stay over the winter, because the seeds provide food for many animals, insects and larvae, especially in the cold season.
A real wild garden offers the months-long bloom of individual flowers such as the breeding forms of petunias, for example. Nevertheless, you can enjoy flower arrangements from spring to autumn.
They can arrange their plants in such a way that the view of the each blossoming one lies, or also put on different corners in each case with early and late bloomers, which offer changing ensembles in the change of the months.
Constructive energy
Therapeutically, he sets the course for the psyche and the perception of our environment by creating new patterns in the synapses. A traditional poison gardener thinks, feels and acts destructively - right down to the language.
He uses most of his energy to destroy, fight and destroy. Terms such as weeds and vermin testify to this necrophilic energy. Cutting, chopping, mowing and eradicating - he uses up his surplus energy to fight something.
We spend much of our time watching life grow, it gets established. We create hiding places, protected corners and plants against the wind - instead of destroying, we invest energy to balance natural dynamics.
model habitats
A garden sometimes even creates more than the "real nature". He needs careful care. Without human intervention, the most dominant plants will prevail: in a few years, the formerly open area consists of brambles; Flower meadows have the disadvantage.
In contrast to the "natural nature", however, you can on a small area different biological habitats in one allow. In a large garden fits a wild hedge as well as a mini-forest, a wildflower meadow, a pond or a swamp bed, a butterfly hill and a rock garden. In addition, there are, for example, a herbal oasis and a fern wall.
Such small habitats as ponds, meadows and hedges are of utmost importance today. They disappear from the cleared landscape. Almost all amphibians today suffer from the loss of temporary waters, which dry out in the summer months and thus kill the predators of tadpoles, fish and dragonfly larvae.
Light water pond and heaps of leaves
In the past there were such dehydrated waters in abundance: wild gravel pits, cattle-drinking on pastures or natural depressions. Most of them were the result of minor human interventions: tree frog and midwife toad, toad and garlic toad lay their eggs here.
These species are now threatened with extinction - and the midwife toad has one of its last occurrences in the region of Hannover / Steinhuder Meer, of all things, in an old basin to Kuhtränke.
A light water pond in the garden helps these endangered species. It should be sunny and unlike the traditional garden pond, it does not have a deep water zone, so it should not be deeper than 50 cm.
In the classic goldfish pond, only the green frogs and the common toad (whose spawn is toxic to fish) can reproduce.
A compost heap, a hedge, a mound and a deadwood heap provide habitat for adult amphibians.
Foliage do not bring gardeners to the dump, but leave it in the winter in a pile in the garden. Hedgehogs can spend the winter here, for the common toad it is a paradise.
They can protect endangered plants by placing them in the garden. For example, checkerboard, yellow daffodil and lady's slipper have become rare in our country.
Better than television
Such minibiotopes reward them richly. While the poison garden remains sterile, whole swarms of birds come into the nature garden. In the autumn, the finches gather on the flowered flowers, grosbeak, starlings and field chokes look for the fruit trees, and in winter, whole flocks of birds settle on the berry bushes.
Ideal trees that provide food for birds are mountain ash, wild cherry, blackthorn, apple, cherry, quince, plum and prickly pear, and vines, blueberries, blueberries and blueberries are also ideal.
A single pasture offers numerous insects pollen and nectar, hoverflies, moths or butterflies. Later, birds use the fluff of the seeds for their nests.
This does not have to be "messy". If you like ordered flower borders, you can plant butterfly bushes there as well.
Do not think that you need a lot of space for such model biotopes. In a large garden you can create a large garden pond. But if you only have a small garden, a backyard or a balcony, you still do not have to do without a wetland biotope.
The marsh bed
In a small garden, you can create a marsh bed: this mortar tub and bucket from the hardware store are suitable. They put you in a hole and fill the earth. Then attach the edge with stones, branches and bark.
Now you can plant aquatic plants in the tub and moisture-loving plants around the "pond". There are, for example, marsh marigold, swan flower, calamus, Wasserdost, meadowsweet, the beautifully flowering marsh sword lily, pennywort, purple loosestrife, water feather, water mint, water crowfoot or arrowhead. The edge can be planted with chives, with elm or royal fern.
Depending on the plant, you not only create a green oasis, but colorful splendor. The marsh marigold flowers, for example, yolk-yellow, the water-feather pale lilac, the swamp-miss not cobalt-blue. The water crowfoot shimmers white, the loosestrife shines with spiky flowers in purple.
Plants for bees and butterflies
Bees and butterflies are threatened by pesticides. In the natural garden we give them relief.
Suitable for these animals are: Akelei, Besenheide. Purple loosestrife, Dost, Flocken- and bellflowers, Daisies, Cloves, Greiskraut, Günsel, heather, Herbstzeitlose, Johannisapfel, clover, Mullein, toadflax, mint, yarrow, blackthorn, cowslip, butterfly shrub, soapwort, gorse, thyme, willow, willowherb and lemon balm.
Food for birds and other animals
The following plants provide seeds and fruits for birds and other animals: birch, bittersweet nightshade, thistles, rowan, ivy, yew, strawberry tree, honeysuckle, hazel, elderberry, pine, cherries, buckthorn, laucon, privet, man's blood, common worm, snowball, daphne , Holly, starwort, forget-me-not, weaver's card, hawthorn, arable stems and turnip.
The herb garden
A natural garden is also ideal for creating a herbal corner, be it as a herb spiral, as a raised bed or in boxes. Domestic herbs are generally undemanding and can be easily pulled from seeds.
Medicinal plants from the local garden. Picture: Marina Lohrbach - fotolia You can enrich your kitchen with home-grown fresh herbs. However, the different herbs have different requirements: Caraway, for example, needs full sun, as fennel, chives loves the partial shade.
Lemon balm loves full sun, but then spreads strong, as well as mint; Thyme loves the sun and permeable soil, peppermint slightly moist soil, valerina prefers moist meadows.
Sage grows very well on normal soil and grows outright. Mediterranean herbs such as rosemary and oregano also feel at home in the garden. They prove to be hardy, but need sunny places.
Edible "weeds"
It is paradoxical: many city dwellers buy lettuce in the supermarket to feed themselves healthy, but throw that into the organic waste, which could feed a whole family in India. Most people today are no longer aware that supposed weeds are valuable additions to the kitchen.
For example, Giersch grows everywhere in the garden and can be prepared in a similar way to spinach, and dandelion and chickweed can be used to make delicious salad.
Plan a game garden
A natural garden is developing. If you want to create it completely new, first look at exactly the plot. How is the floor? Sour, normal or alkaline? Is it generally wet or dry? Sunny or shady?
Get an overview of which wild plants grow on the property. Do not just tear out everything that "does not fit". Did you buy a cleared property? Then wait and see what kind of plants sprout up in spring.
Is the soil very nutrient-poor? Then try a water garden, a pond or a swamp bed. Water and swamp plants grow better under such conditions than land plants.
Or you make a virtue out of necessity, the barren soil, and put on a gravel garden. A variant would be a rock garden. There are quickly settle on many special plants. Larkspur, for example, likes to grow between stones.
Create a natural garden
The type of soil on her property is important, and she decides which plants are suitable. But other important factors come to Earth: wind and wind, drainage and the situation.
In the first place, you do not have to do something to put it on: Do not use chemically-synthesized pesticides, easily soluble mineral fertilizers, or peat.
Do not buy hybrids, which usually have special demands that their natural garden does not offer; they lack the gene pool and are not very resistant.
Instead, buy native plants with claims that their garden offers, thus eliminating the need for fertilizer and watering.
The principles of the natural garden
1) Adjust their plantings to the location, not the location of the plants.
2) Use predominantly indigenous wild plants, ie plants that have gained a foothold here for centuries. Make sure that the seed is ecologically sound. Do not be afraid of neozoa like the sunflower, but avoid invasive neozoa.
3) Plant and selectively target plants that offer nectar to specialized insect species. Be sure to use timed flowering and fruit phases so that the animals can find food all year long.
4) Use ecological building materials, untreated European wood, natural gravel, natural sand and natural stones. As little plastic as possible! In the natural garden, you use as much building material as possible from the garden itself: the branch cut from the fruit trees, for example, provides an excellent setting for a raised bed, or a limit for paths; the compost becomes excellent soil; You can use stones that arise when digging for a drywall or a barbecue area and on a remaining trunk after sawing you can create a feeding house for birds. You can also use branch cut, accumulating dead wood and bark to build nest boxes.
5) Nature is change. Not every natural dynamic is prevented in the garden, but rather directed. The wild garden is changing, that's its essence. They mow, prune the hedges or rake the paths only so far that the garden structure is preserved.
But: If plants sow themselves, tolerate or encourage this in the natural garden. You can mow, cut or hedge hedges or even support this process, for example, by not only allowing flowers that propagate themselves, such as daisies in certain places, but also digging up the self-seeded plants from other parts of the grassy area plant in these places. In other parts, you can mow occasionally to support flowers that need short lawns and can not withstand the dominant flowers.
The dead stems will remain until next spring.
6) The soil remains intact. An exception are poison deposits. For example, if your soil is contaminated with asbestos, you should definitely wear it off. However, a natural gardener does not soil or replace it on a large scale to settle exotic plants - a natural garden is not a rainforest terrarium.
Instead, they feed the soil with compost humus, natural mulch and intermediate crops.
7) Natural gardening means minimizing energy. Leaf vacuum cleaners are a no go. Landscaped garden lighting opposes the idea of a natural garden. Natural gardeners mainly use rainwater for watering.
8) "Pest" is a term that the game garden does not know. If necessary, promote the predators of lice, caterpillars or voles or cleverly plant plants that drive away such herbivores.
In general, damage to plants is part of the natural processes that they want to have in the garden.
9) Use the garden for the garden: From nettles, for example, a good manure can be produced, which serves as natural fertilizer. Organic remains such as withered leaves or dead shrubs enrich the soil. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
In the second part "The Nature Garden - Forest, Water or Meadow?" Read:
- Flower meadows and flower lawns
- Waldgärten
- Fern and deciduous gardens
- water gardens
- Felsengärten
Literature:
Violet Stevenson: The Natural Garden. Munich 1995