People are very intent on improving the immediate surroundings and interior aspects of their homes or businesses. While these are all good aspects to work on, you shouldn’t forget the ecosystem that surrounds it. Protecting your property’s ecosystem does more than you think.
What does the ecosystem refer to anyway? To put it simply, this is the balance of plants, animals and other organisms around your property.
As a property owner, it’s important to maintain balance. Your property’s original ecosystem will have been disrupted by whatever building work went into building your home or business (and the homes and businesses around it), but you can work to bring some of that balance back.
Balancing the ecosystem will not only make your property more pleasing to the eyes. It can also make it feel safer and healthier for both mind and body. Here are a few tips on how you can balance the ecosystem of your property.
Keep Your Soil Healthy And Productive
For the plants, your soil is going to be the main source of biodiversity. If you want to maintain a clean and green environment around your property, then it’s a must that your soil is as healthy and productive as possible. There are actually quite a few ways to keep your soil fertile for grass and other plants to grow.
The first thing you’d want to do is to get rid of as much grass as you can. Replacing a turf lawn with native plants will re-introduce a diversity of plant species designed to thrive in your region. Those species will provide indigenous sources of food for local pollinators, birds and other wildlife, thus rebuilding some links in the local food chain. They’ll also put the right kinds of nutrients back into the soil when they die back each year.
If you want to keep your soil fertile in your gardens, you should do so using organic compost. Using inorganic compost can actually cause damage to the other parts of the ecosystem. Moreover, it’s much healthier for the garden to grow naturally and organically as well.
Get the Green Building Project Checklist
Use this handy checklist on your next project to keep track of all the ways you can make your home more energy-efficient and sustainable.
Last but not the least, if you think you don’t have a green thumb to keep your plant life nice and healthy, consider hiring a gardener. There’s a lot of technique and principles that go behind keeping plant life well around your property. If this isn’t your strong suit, you can have someone with experience do it for you.
Crowd Controlling Geese
If you live near water, then you might be having geese overpopulation problems. Geese are usually harmless, but they are known to charge at people without provocation from time to time. They’re lovely to look at, but they can be hard to deal with at times.
There are many humane ways to manage geese. The best way to start keeping geese away from your property is to use liquid repellents. These give off a scent that geese don’t like, which causes them to stay away from the area where you spread the repellent on. You keep the geese away without hurting them.
When doing this, make sure to pick the most humane way possible to keep the geese away. Remember, they are a part of the ecosystem just like you, and they don’t deserve to be hurt or killed just to keep your property free of geese.
Learn Proper Landscaping
It’s important to maintain a balance of natural and human-built structures within the property. It can be tempting to expand the area that your home or business functionally uses, but it’s not really good to do away with the green areas around your home or business property.
Follow the lead of city planners for strategies to maximize space and minimize building footprints. You might find you have room to expand up instead of out.
Investing in proper landscaping will have benefits for you and your home or business. You can consider hiring a professional landscaper to manage your property for you. They can strike the balance between structure and nature to maintain better control of your property’s ecosystem.
Don’t Use Traps
Animals like squirrels and raccoons are going to be coming in and out of your property in search of food. This could seem very frustrating, especially in the case of raccoons, where they can become very destructive. A lot of people resort to using traps to keep animals at bay, but that’s very inhumane.
Instead, try to minimize how attractive your home or business is to species like raccoons. Keep food and garbage securely locked away and maintain the exteriors of your structures so creatures don’t have room to burrow in and make dens. You might also consider making an attractive home for animals in a far corner of your property to keep them away from your living areas.
Alternatively, another safe way to keep them away is to use liquid repellents as well. These animals have a strong sense of smell. This technique is safe, and it doesn’t hurt the animals in any way.
Keep in mind that there are also laws in place that prevent you from hurting animals.
Maintain A Good Balance Of Plants And Trees
This is one tip that will keep your eyes pleased. Make sure there’s a balance of plants and trees on your property. Learn about the ecosystem you’re a part of and try to mimic that ecosystem in a small way. If you’re on the prairies, plant prairie grasses. If your region was formerly forest, create some tree canopy cover in your backyard.
You might try to recreate your region’s natural landscaping, but there’s no reason you can’t also plant simple vegetables in your yard. This will give you access to fresh vegetables regularly, and it can also balance your property such that it’s providing for you as well as other species.
Managing your property’s ecosystem can be tough work. It will take some research and maybe some trial and error to properly maintain the balance in your ecosystem. With these tips, the task will be easier to achieve, and with enough effort, you’ll be able to have a well-balanced property in the future.
Feature image: Matthew Smith
