Do Something Good for Nature (& for Yourself) This Earth Day 2024

I've always said that the garden is good to the third degree: good for you, good for your community, and good for the entire planet. And I'm not exaggerating. I really think we could make a huge difference if we each had our own little space to grow some of our food—whether that's just a container on an apartment balcony or a huge kitchen garden.

Consider this: for every seed planted, you're doing something good for the world. Maybe you're reducing single-use plastic waste on your salad greens. Maybe you're providing some nectar for a butterfly. Maybe you're inspiring your neighbor to convert a small patch of their lawn to garden space, as well.

So let's look at 10 garden projects you could do to celebrate our big and beautiful planet this spring. Some of these can be done in an afternoon, and others will take a bit more planning and prep work. No matter the time and space commitment, each of these Earth Day projects can make a difference!

10 Earth Day Projects

• Set up a native plant space
• Certify your yard as a wildlife habitat
• Plant flowers for our bees
• Install a bird bath
• Build a raised bed
• Plant salad seeds to reduce food waste
• Set up an herb garden
• Start a compost pile
• Start an indoor gardening project
• Help a friend start a garden

Set up a Native Plant Space in Your Yard

I think native planting spaces have gotten a bad rap with some people for looking a little too wild. You can grow native and pollinator-friendly plants in your landscape but still maintain some sense of control, mostly by using garden edging to keep everything in its place. I like to say, Formal on the outside, wild on the inside.

Some of the best plants to grow in a native plant space are milkweed (make sure to find a local variety so you can support your butterflies and moths), anise hyssop and other perennial herbs, echinacea, sunflowers, daisies, and rudbeckia. I also recommend mixing in some native grasses. Grasses are a great place for wildlife to hide and raise their young. They're also beautiful and add a softness to your native plant space.

My kitchen garden is surrounded by a native plant space that's teeming with life. It gives wildlife a place to hang out but also creates a barrier between the woods behind my house and the interior part of the garden that I don't want as many little critters visiting.

Learn more about setting up a native plant and pollinator garden.

Certify Your Yard as a Wildlife Habitat

I've gotten my own yard certified as a wildlife habitat, and I can say it's a great way to feel like you're part of a much larger movement for better environmental practices. 

There are five requirements to become a Certified Wildlife Habitat. Even if you can't meet all of these requirements, you can still take away some ideas for caring for your space in a way that's good for our little planet. 

The first requirement is to have food sources like flowers and grasses that produce seed heads. Second, you have to have a water source (more on that in a bit). Third, you have to provide places where wildlife can hide and take shelter, either from a predator or from bad weather. Having a wooded space around the garden, growing some evergreen trees or shrubs, stacking logs, building little structures, and even planting a trellis with thick vines can create little places for animals to take cover.  The fourth requirement goes hand in hand with the last one, and that's to provide a place for animals to raise their young. A heavily planted native garden can be full of little spots where they might nest, burrow, and dig to keep their families safe. 

Lastly, you have to follow sustainable practices. That means you can't spray any herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides, which can decimate the wildlife population we're trying to support. That also means no synthetic fertilizers on your lawn, since the runoff from those fertilizers gets into our water system and can impact the organic nature of the native plant space. You can also embrace water conservation methods. 

Learn more about certifying your yard on the National Wildlife Federation's website.

Plant Flowers for Our Bees

If every single one of us just planted a couple flowers for our bees this Earth Day, imagine what a world of good it would do!

There are so many beautiful flowers that bees loves that are really easy to grow from seed, including anise hyssop (pictured below), asters, borage, bee balm, cosmos, echinacea, goldenrod, lavender, marigolds, mountain mint, rudbeckia, sage blue salvia, snapdragons, sunflowers, wild bergamot, yarrow, and zinnias.

African blue basil is an absolute bee magnet, but you can't grow it from seed; definitely grab a little plant if you see one at your local nursery.

If you're buying these plants instead of growing them from seed, I encourage you to head to your local nursery instead of a big box store. They're more likely to carry plants that have been grown naturally and organically, not with synthetic fertilizers. The whole point is to give tons of great, delicious, healthy food to the bees, right? The last thing you want to be giving them is plants that have nasty synthetic stuff on them.

Some of these plants are perennials, so you—and the bees—will be able to enjoy them for years to come!

Read more on how to attract bees and butterflies to your garden.

Install a Bird Bath

Adding sources of fresh water to your yard is a really easy way to help out local wildlife. You don't have to go full out with a bubbling fountain or anything requiring a motor. Just a simple bird bath or an area of standing water where wildlife can have a drink before going back to slurping nectar will do just fine.

One thing to note is that you'll need to keep the water fresh and clean and filled, obviously, so it's always ready for wildlife.

While you're at it, consider adding a little bird house or nesting bag to your space. You won't regret inviting birds into your garden when they're eating all your tomato hornworms for you!

Build a Raised Garden Bed

Gardening in a raised bed is a really accessible way to get started growing a little bit of your own food. You can add raised garden beds to a patio or balcony or even the roof of a townhome (just be mindful of weight limits) to grow in urban areas. You can stick a raised bed alongside your driveway in the suburbs. You can install a raised bed anywhere you don't want to spend years amending the soil for vegetables.

Your raised bed doesn't have to be anything fancy or super expensive. Here's how to build a wood raised bed for around $100, and here's how to turn a cattle trough into a rollable raised bed.

Plant Salad Seeds to Reduce Food Waste

We can significantly reduce our food waste, our single-use plastic consumption, and our food miles by growing a little bit of our food, especially something as easy to grow and harvest as salad.

One of my favorite books of all time is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. In it, she writes, "If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week."

That's an insane number! And how much of that oil goes to trucking around spinach leaves that just turn mushy in the back of the fridge before being thrown away? The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average American family tosses about $1,600 worth of food each year, and I'm betting a lot of that is salad greens. 

I don't want to sound all doom and gloom, but I really do think we can make a huge impact by growing our own little salad gardens. Imagine being able to step outside and cut as many leaves as you want for your next meal. The rest of the leaves stay in the garden, so you have more fresh leaves on hand for your next salad. You don't have to worry about a bunch of greens spoiling and leaking green ooze into your refrigerator's produce drawer. 

Learn more about growing your own little salad garden. 

Start an Herb Garden

Growing your own herbs is pretty much the simplest thing you can do. You don't have to have a lot of space (all you need is a sunny windowsill or a balcony), you don't need much sunlight (4 hours a day will do), and you don't need any gardening skills.

Plus, you can set up a little herb garden for yourself on a low budget!

All you need to do is grab a steel tub from a hardware store and add some drainage holes to the bottom. Put down some burlap or a piece of cloth at the bottom to keep your soil in. Fill your tub with topsoil, compost, and coarse sand to make a homemade soil mix that herbs love. Buy a couple starter herbs from your local nursery (or even your grocery store) and plant them around the container.

And then place your container in a spot that gets 4 to 6 hours of sun. You'll be able to skip past all those little plastic packages of herbs at the store!

Read more about starting your own little herb garden.

Start a Compost Pile

Composting is such a simple thing we can each do at home to reduce the amount of waste our household contributes to a landfill. I'm actually pretty convinced that composting could save the planet. Not only does composting take care of some of our food scraps and yard waste for us, it also creates nutrient-rich organic material we can use to enrich our gardens. Compost even helps with drainage.

Learn more about the different ways to start composting at home.

Start an Indoor Gardening Project

You can bring the joy of gardening indoors with a couple little pots or even just a sprouting jar. Growing sprouts is one of my favorite indoor projects, and you can do it right in your kitchen without any light at all. The other projects will need some light, either light from a window or a $20 grow light. You can grow your own tray of microgreens, start an indoor herb garden, or regrow plants from grocery store scraps.

Read more about some of my favorite indoor gardening projects.

Help a Friend Start a Garden

Gardening is better when it's shared with others. Pick a friend who's been wanting to work on their green thumb and then help them get started with a little herb or salad garden. Take them plant shopping and show them how to pick the healthiest plants for their space. Or maybe you just share some seeds that you've saved from low-maintenance flowers in your own garden. Do a little something to spread the garden love!

Celebrate Our One & Only Planet out in the Garden!

This Earth Day, let's all take a minute to remember that gardening is not just about growing lots of food or pretty flowers we can bring inside. It's also about connecting more with nature and doing some good in our landscape. The best days are the ones we can spend outdoors and experience something that reminds us of the magic of nature and our tiny role on this little blue dot we call home.