A polytunnel is a great choice for those who want to live a more eco-friendly and ethical way of life. A polytunnel can help you to grow at least some of your own food organically, which can reduce your carbon footprint and be good for our planet. It can also be a boon to the environment in a host of other ways. One of these is that it can allow you to improve your local environment by increasing biodiversity, which helps build resilience in a system and will make your efforts more sustainable.
The plants you grow in your polytunnel can be more diverse than those that could be grown outside where you live. The greater range of plants, whether edible, useful or merely decorative, can all contribute to creating an ecosystem crammed full with different plants that can thrive under cover where you live. Polyculture growing areas will be better able to stand up to any potential problems that may come along.
Good organic gardening practice can also help you create a healthy soil ecosystem that will not only help a diverse range of plants to grow but which will also teem with life in its own right. Healthy, biodiverse soil will stand you in good stead as a gardener for years to come.
It is not just the local biodiversity where you live that you can improve with a polytunnel but also the general biodiversity of our world. By growing heritage crops and preserving the seeds, you can help to preserve the diversity of our edible crops for generations to come.
A polytunnel, being warmer and creating a slightly different environment to the rest of your outside space, can also be helpful to a range of wildlife in your garden. From frogs and toads, to bees, to butterflies, many species will find a sanctuary in your polytunnel. The diverse wildlife visiting your polytunnel will help you as an organic gardener in a range of different ways.
Biodiversity is key to a resilient, eco-friendly and sustainable gardening system and a polytunnel is a great place to work to improve it where you live. Take care of biodiversity and you will find that nature will help you in your efforts to improve and use your garden to the fullest.
