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Grass clippings, leaves, and vegetable scraps from your kitchen make compost -- called "black gold" by some -- to amend the soil naturally for healthier plants.

Save trees that help our soil, water, and air. Reduce trash in landfills. Reduce pollutants leaching into soil and water. Buy recycled paper goods. Choose reusable shopping bags.

The most effective way to reduce waste is to not create it in the first place. Buy used items, from clothes to building materials. Look for products that use less packaging. Look for items that can be reused. Maintain and repair products. Donate used goods to thrift shops, or pass them on to your neighbors through on-line exchanges.

Keep rainwater on-site. Increased stormwater volume and velocity cause erosion and sedimentation that kills aquatic species. Use water from your roof for your native garden.

A rain garden allows us to make a real difference in reducing one of the major sources of pollution: storm-water runoff.

A driveway with a permeable surface is another way to slow down, spread out, and soak in storm water.

Lawn grass requires high maintenance and lots of water. Lawn maintenance leads to air pollution from gas mowers, and water pollution from fertilizers and other chemicals. Turf grass has low wildlife value and does not support biodiversity.

Alien invasive plants crowd out the natives and reduce diversity of species.

By favoring native plants, gardeners can provide a welcoming environment for wildlife of all kinds.

Trees keep pollutants out of the soil and water, raise property values, filter rainwater, prevent erosion, and reduce air conditioning costs. To support insect life that feeds birds, we need to increase the number of native trees in our lawns and underplant them with the understory and shrub layers absent from most managed landscapes.

Leave the shredded leaves to decompose and release nutrients into the soil.

Lawn fertilizers, pesticides, and other toxic substances leach into the ground, contaminating your property and our streams.

Feed birds in wintertime. Provide bird nesting boxes and bat houses. Provide and maintain water sources. Add brush piles and plant shrubs for cover and food.

Pollinators are responsible for helping over 80% of the world's flowering plants reproduce. Without them, humans and wildlife wouldn't have much to eat or enjoy. Animals that assist plants in their reproduction as pollinators include species of ants, bees, beetles, birds, butterflies, flies, moths, and wasps.

The use of solar energy to produce electricity allows the user to become less dependent on the world's fossil fuel supplies and on the local electric company.

If you have established other practices on your property, here's your chance to tell all. Vegetative roof? Impervious pavement replaced with native grasses or other plants? Cistern (bigger than a rain barrel) to collect rainwater? Other alternative energy source?