How you can help mother nature by right gardening practices

More than 18 years working in landscaping industry in UAE, if I’ll compare in recent years, I have noticed increase in usage of gravels mulch in most of the landscape spaces. Many community facilities management agencies and designers prefer to remove or reduce the greenery and replaced it with gravel mulch as they find it cheaper than maintaining ground covers or lawn. But is it an environment friendly solution? is it a best practice for UAE or Dubai? Is this what we want for the future gardens to be covered with gravel mulch??I am not in favor of using gravel mulch as I don’t see how it benefiting the people and the essence of “environment friendly” concept. Every gravel mulched area means a somewhere a piece of mountain has been destroyed. So, in a way, we are removing mountains to decorate the cities. ?

I am encouraging all to work together towards more ecosystem landscape designs and say no to all those elements which will harm this natural process of landscape gardens. Gravel or bark mulch must be avoided. They don’t help much rather its more harmful for plants and environment especially in UAE region. Can we be more creative in our landscape designs? if we want to reduce the numbers of ground covers or grass to save water consumption but at the same time if we are looking for stabilizing sand or soil areas then we can have tree planted in those empty pockets and place some beautiful shrubs around it to create more stabilized and aesthetic landscape gardens.

Similarly, Artificial lawn is something as a landscaper that I regret doing it. Every time my client insists me to install, I say big ‘NO’ to it but I have to admit I have done some small projects and I hope mother nature will forgive me for that. And I have decided not to promote or do any artificial lawn projects in UAE anymore even its loss of business for me. I know my statement about artificial lawn might upset some of the suppliers of this material whom I know and some of them are good friends of mine, but at the end of the day we are covering earth with plastic under the disguise of greenery which is not correct. Let’s be honest to ourselves, many of us can give me plus points about why artificial lawn is good for landscape areas but truth is we are just dumping plastic in our backyard it’s not only toxic for environment but also adding to rise in urban temperature and its must be stopped immediately. We have limited urban areas to develop under landscape garden and if we are thinking of covering it with plastic or gravel then better don’t do the garden keep it empty trust me you will have better health benefits from open soil areas, natural grass or plants in your backyard than having plastic.

If you are serious about gardening if you love spending time in your garden, then you must allow to live all those tiny little living things as their life cycle or existence depends on these natural resources, and they are running out of these resources or spaces. Let’s think about them and not just us, say NO to artificial lawn. Avoid or rather stop using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We only can make our surrounding more ecofriendly and sustainable.