Using plants in a garden, we can not only improve our own quality of life in a range of ways. We can also use plants in a garden to cut home bills.
If you are lucky enough to have a garden, you should be aware of exactly how lucky you are and just how much a garden can help you, in so many ways.
How Can Your Garden Help You Save Money On Your Home Bills?
A garden is an amazing thing. If you are careful, conscientious and hard working, a garden can reward you in numerous ways. It can provide you with so much besides cutting your household costs, if only you know how to harness it.
A garden can:
- Reduce your food bills and general household expenditure.
- Cut the energy bills for your home.
- Reduce water bills if you are on a metered water supply.
- Cut household bills for leisure and entertainment.
And when you garden you can easily take a range of small, simple steps to cut the cost of your gardening, so that you can successfully garden with little outlay while still saving money in at least some of the ways mentioned above.
So, let’s look in a little more depth at exactly how we might be able to use plants in a garden to cut home bills:
Cutting Food & Shopping Costs Using Plants in a Garden
Perhaps the most obvious way that plants in a garden can be used to cut home bills is when those plants can provide you with food or other things that you would normally need to buy.
Of course, even when we cannot be entirely self-sufficient with the space that we have available to us, many of us can still grow a surprising about of food where we live.
Even in very small spaces, it is possible to grow a surprising number of calories to feed yourself and your family, if you take the right approach and are not afraid to put in a little bit of hard work.
With techniques like layering plants in space and time, vertical growing, and maximising edge, to name just a few examples, we can increase the yield that we are able to generate on our properties and therefore make a substantial reduction in the food and other household goods that we need to buy.
When we choose the right plants for the right places, work with nature, and embrace the varied life around us, it is amazing what nature can provide.
We can save money on food bills by creating a vegetable garden or forest garden, having ‘edimental’ borders, or even just growing some plants in pots in small spaces.
By learning some gardening, food preparation, cooking and preservation skills, and perhaps other DIY skills too, we can truly learn to make the most of all that we grow in our gardens and significantly reduce the amount that we must buy.
Cutting Energy Bills Using Plants in a Garden
It is interesting to note, however, that using plants in a garden can provide far more than just food. And when we choose the right plants and position them carefully and well, we can use them to not only cut food bills but to cut our home energy bills too.
First of all, we might be able to cut the energy required to heat our homes by positioning wind break hedgerows or shelter belts to block cold prevailing winds.
When we choose and place the right species, these can slow, filter and disperse the wind and provide shelter not only for other plants in our garden, but also for the home itself. This can make a surprising amount of difference to energy efficiency in the home.
Cladding an exposed wall of a home with climbing plants can also potentially have a bearing on energy use inside. The plants that climb up and cover a wall can actually provide a layer of insulation which can help to keep the interior of that home more cozy throughout the year.
Another literal and more direct way in which we might use plants to cut heating home bills is by using plants as fuel. If you have a wood burning stove in your home, there might be potential for you to sustainably harvest fuel or at least kindling for it from your garden.
Most of us do not have enough space to grow the fuel we need on our own properties. But we might sometimes be able to supplement a local supply from elsewhere with wood sustainably harvested from our gardens through coppicing or pollarding, which could cut energy bills at least a little.
Cutting Water Meter Bills Using Plants in a Garden
Making the right gardening decisions, selecting the right plants, and combining them in the right ways, can also help to cut water use in a garden, and potentially even helping to cut water use in your home.
By choosing native plants that can cope with drought conditions, or with long periods with little water in summer where these occur, we can reduce the amount of water that is needed for their care and reduce water use in our gardens.
We can of course also use plant material to make mulch, or to compost before using as a mulch in garden beds and growing areas. We can chop and drop plant materials. Mulching is a crucial concept in organic gardening, and we can plan to grow the right plants to provide the materials we need for this purpose.
Mulching is not only a way to add fertility and improve and protect the soil. It is also great for water conservation, helping to keep moisture in the soil where it is available to plant roots.
The right plants combined in the right ways can be used in a range of different water management and water conserving schemes, from rain gardens to vegetated swales, to wildlife ponds… and even in reed beds or other similar systems used to manage grey water from your home.
Saving water is always the right thing to do. But if you are on a metered water supply then of course the less water you use in your home and garden, the less you will have to pay.
Cutting the Cost of Bills for Leisure and Entertainment
A garden filled with beautiful and productive plants is more than just a functional space – it is one that can deliver a range of intangible yields as well as tangible ones like food and other household resources.
It can become a haven where you can relax and unwind on your own, or a space where you can entertain and spend quality time with family and friends. It can be a space for hobbies, whether or not gardening is one of them, a home gym, a backyard bar, or even a workplace.
A garden filled with the right plants, designed to meet your own specific needs, will be a space where you will be delighted to spend plenty of time.
And when you are able to get what you need from your garden, you are likely to be able to cut the cost of going out to have fun. You can stay home and be entertained and have fun instead – at least some of the time.
Cutting the Cost of Your Gardening
You might say that it is all well and good saving some money with a garden, but creating and maintaining a garden takes some investment to begin with. Won’t the garden cost you the money you saved?
The truth is that you could easily spend more than you intended on a garden. But you definitely do not need to spend a fortune to achieve the results in your garden that you need. Cutting the cost of gardening, and, in many cases, eliminating the cost altogether is more achievable than you might think, making the savings on home bills even more impressive.
To cut the cost of your gardening:
- Use natural resources already at your disposal.
- Build in sustainable features like rainwater harvesting and composting from the beginning.
- Take a DIY approach to propagation and other projects.
- Upcycle and reuse.
- Invest in a polytunnel and other elements to increase yield and decrease losses.
- Embrace perennials that can continue to give year after year.
These are just a few tips to help you set out on a budget friendly track as you create and tend your garden.
Using plants in a garden to cut home bills does not mean spending excessively on your garden to achieve it.
References:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/may/07/how-to-grow-your-own-fruit-veg-cut-food-bills
https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/garden/a36297557/save-money-utility-bills-garden/
