Times may be tight but this should be looked upon as an opportunity to become a creative thinker.
Use your garden to help stretch the weekly budget, learn a few new tricks, plus get a breath of fresh air and some exercise at the same time!
**Fill the gaps
**Taking cuttings (or separating clumpforming plants) is a great way to fill gaps in the garden. A little trial and error will soon weed out those plants which don’t grow successfully from cutting. Good plants to take cuttings from in spring include: daisies, hebes, pelargoniums, penstemon, fuchsia and Chinese lantern. Plants to divide include daylily, renga lily, dietes, flax and ligularia.
**Grow your own
**Salad greens are one of the easiest things to grow and can be picked daily as required with not a scrap of waste. Sow a patch of greens every six to eight weeks, avoiding the height of summer as they don’t germinate well in high temperatures. Sow a second patch three or four weeks after the first so you can keep on picking them when the first crop is ready to be re-sown. Kings Seeds have an interesting range, including mesclun mixes, mizuna, mustard, misome, rocket and a great range of gorgeous lettuces.
**Become a collector
**Scour roadside inorganic waste collections for containers and useful garden objects. My old hand-mower and practically brandnew strawberry planter both came from the roadside! Cracks and chips in pots can often be disguised with plants, and many items are discarded simply because the owner is tired of them. Remember, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure!
**Share your garden
**If your kids want an outdoor pet, my advice (after having tried it myself) is to forget smelly rabbits and go for chooks instead. You’ll have fresh eggs daily from free-range chooks and a pile of fertiliser for the garden – perfect!
**out of the box
**Create your own garden sculpture and garden art. Flat rocks stacked from largest to smallest, glued or lightly cemented together, make an eye-catching garden feature. Shells and driftwood can be fashioned into amazing mobiles to hang from a pergola or tree and plants can also be sculpted into a striking focal point, as seen in this photo (top right) of Petra Donath’s Blenheim garden, Le Petit Jardin.
**Save seeds
**Deadheading keeps plants looking fresh and usually encourages further blooming. Towards the end of the season, let annual plants (flowers and veges which only last one season) form seed pods. Save seed to plant out the following season. If the parent plant is a hybrid, seed will grow but generally produce inferior flowers or fruit.
**Conserve water
**Containers are costly to maintain, either consuming lots of water or lots of dollars when you have to replace dead plants due to lack of water. Planting succulents – such as crassula, yucca, aloe, echeveria and sedum, plus native flax, five finger and Poor Knights Lily – is a great solution. All will survive short dry periods. This doesn’t rule out watering completely, but it lessens the need to water every day and reduces the risk of drought-induced death!
Fresh flowers Save on fresh flowers by growing your own sweet peas, dahlias, zinnias and cosmos to fill your vases all summer long. Homegrown posies also make much-appreciated gifts. Bundle up a bunch of garden flowers with a bit of greenery in brown paper or cellophane, and tie with raffia or ribbon to look just like the florist’s!
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