Second-hand shops, reclamation yards and even car boot sales can provide an Aladdin’s cave of items to reuse around your garden and save you money. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Old railway platform seats and seating from boats have been put to use in the past, while DIY enthusiasts have constructed seats featuring little more than a short piece of scaffolding plank resting on two neat piles of old bricks. Funky benches have been made using old tyres at either end supporting seats of painted scaffolding planks.
If you live near the sea, explore the beach to search for large pieces of driftwood, or shells out of which you could make a feature mosaic to hang on your house wall. Mosaics and patterns can also be made out of pebbles or broken coloured tiles arranged Roman style.
Fallen logs can be used to edge paths, while those on a budget may be more inclined to go for local gravel.
Eye-catching containers can be made out of anything you may otherwise dump, from old food cans painted with brightly coloured weather-resistant paint, to sinks which can house a myriad of rock plants, and teapots, mugs and rusty buckets with holes drilled in the bottom which can be planted up and strategically placed to brighten up the scene.
Old wicker baskets can also make good plant pots, stained, varnished and lined with black plastic, while broken pots can be used for a display of rock plants such as sempervivums, surrounded by broken bits of pot.
Wine aficionados who are lucky enough to have had their wine delivered in wooden boxes with lovely embossed logos should consider growing salad crops in them. See if your local wine merchant might have any boxes spare and preserve the wood with Danish oil to weatherproof it as well as drilling holes in the base for drainage. Port boxes can also act as good containers.
You can also grow crops in old drawers, weatherproofing the wood first and then drilling holes for drainage and lining the drawers with plastic. You may also have to add corner braces to the drawers to stop the wood from warping, but they will make eye-catching veg containers.
Use your own home-grown stems of bamboo, when the canes are green and flexible, or red dogwood, to cut and weave into plant supports.
If you want to create an arch which will be smothered in flowering plants, but don’t want to spend a fortune, you can do it cheaply by bending old lengths of metal pipe or builders’ reinforcing bars, which will all be hidden by the climbers
Written by Hannah Stephenson