The Frugal Flower Garden - How to Build a Beautiful Garden for Almost Nothing

In these times of economic uncertainty, we’re all looking for ways to cut back on spending. Yet we don’t want to cut back on life's pleasures. We still want hobbies and activities as well as ways to beautify our homes – all of which generally cost considerable sums of money. Well, I am here to tell you that a free garden is the answer.

Gardening gets you out into the fresh air and sunshine. It’s a fascinating and rewarding pastime that adds value to your home and improves your living conditions as well as the environment. Gardening can be a year round pursuit.

But the Free Garden is more than just a garden. You won’t have one of those instant weekend projects like in the magazines. The free garden is so much more rewarding! It takes time and creativity. It will put you in contact with other gardeners from whom you’ll learn and with whom you can share your bounty. In the Free Garden, every plant, every decorative object has a story, a memory and great sentimental value so that your garden will develop spiritual overtones and become a haven from the harsh realities of the modern world.

Plan the Garden

• Use free resources like the library and Internet (well, that’s not free but if you already have it…) to research. Find a plant zone map to help you understand how to adapt to your particular climate.

• Round up some garden tools. Shovels, rakes, hoes, spades, wheelbarrows, etc. are easy to find at yard sales. Not free but cheap. If the old folks are leaving their bungalow for a condo, they’ll probably give you their old garden stuff. If the tools are in bad shape, sand and finish the handle then sharpen and oil the blade.

• Consider your yard and decide on the area that you wish to decorate with a garden. Make sure the space is free of tree roots and gets adequate amounts of sunshine (6 – 8 hours constitutes full sun). If the garden will be shaded part of the day, remember that morning sun is best with shade in the afternoon.

• Consider your drainage. Dig a hole and fill it with water. If the water takes about 30 minutes to drain, you’ve got a good spot. Of course, you can work on your soil but it would be great to have a good start.

• Lay out the area with a hose. Remember that curves are more appealing to the eye than straight lines.

• Cover the grass with several layers of newspaper.  Hose it down and keep it damp.

• Cover the newspaper with shredded mulch which is often available at your local landfill (dump) for free!

• Dig a mowing edge around the whole garden to keep grass from invading.

• After several months, turn the whole mess over. The grass will be dead and newspaper pretty much decomposed. Free necessitates a lot of hard work with the shovel. But that’s great exercise – you can save all that money on a gym membership.

• As you turn it over, chop up lumps and use a heavy-duty rake to make the soil nice and fine.

• Mix in some of your free compost. (See below)

I remember years ago, some of the old immigrant folks with agrarian roots just threw their compost ingredients directly into the garden. When you begin your garden (starting in early fall gives you plenty of time to improve the soil) try the old world way – add lots of stuff from the compost ingredient list below right on top of the newspaper/mulch mix.

Every so often, on those nice winter days when you really need some outdoor exercise, go out with a pitchfork and mix it all up. This will add texture and nutrients to the soil which has been compacted over the years. Lots of suburbs are built on clay and some really lousy fill dirt and will benefit from the addition of compost materials.

A lot of people like to build gardens quickly. They run to the big box stores and buy bags and bags of ‘garden soil.’ It seems so silly to buy dirt. Some of the mulch you see at the big garden centers has been made by companies that chop down and grind up large cypress trees, decimating the few remaining southern old-growth forests, a practice that led to the extinction of one of America’s most beautiful creatures – the Ivory Bill Woodpecker. But that is another story.

A good compost pile takes time but will save you money on fertilizer. Commercial fertilizer is not old expensive but the run-off devastates our waterways and does nothing to improve the soil. Start with large, light material like dried plant trimmings and layer:

• Grass clippings

• Shredded newspaper

• Shredded leaves – your neighbors probably won’t mind if you relieve them of all those bags of leaves in the fall. Dry, shredded leaves break down much faster than whole leaves. Just run your lawn mower back and forth at the edge of the pile making sure that you have removed sticks or objects that could damage the blade.

• Coffee grounds and shredded tea bags. Many coffee shops will gladly give you their used coffee grounds. Just make sure you have a strong trash bag or container with lid.

• Vacuum bag dirt. This makes vacuuming so much more rewarding!

• Wood shavings, sawdust, wood ash. (Do not use charcoal ashes from your outdoor grill as they contain harmful ingredients.)

• Hair. If you don’t cut the family’s hair at home (we save hundreds of dollars on bad haircuts), many shops will be happy to give you their sweepings.

• Eggshells- rinsed and crushed, and peanut shells. (I don’t use the food garbage that many gardening books recommend because it may draw rats)

• Shredded tree stuff. When the tree trimmers come around the neighborhood, they let me take all I want from the truck. All that shredded tree stuff used to seem so sad but now, when I hear that horrible sound of trees being ground up, I grab an empty trashcan and run. It smells really good too.

• Manure – Compost needs manure to heat up and kill unwanted bacteria and pests as well as to speed up the decomposition process. Next time you go to the farmer’s market, ask the egg man if you could have some chicken manure. Our egg man was cheerfully willing to share. When you drive out to the farm, make sure you have strong, sealable containers. Raw chicken manure is heavy and stinks to high heaven. Ditto cow or horse manure. If you can get it, use it.

• Bone meal. You really need bone meal. It provides the phosphorus needed to produce nice flowers. This is the only thing I haven’t figured out how to do for free.

• Seaweed, ground sea shells.

• Build your compost in layers. Aerate often – turn the pile with a pitch fork every week or so. Well-aired compost encourages the growth of beneficial microorganisms.

• A well-maintained and aerated compost pile will not emit foul odors. When you first add raw manure, of course, you will have to endure somewhat of a stink factor, but only for a few days or so. I add raw manure in late winter when the neighbors aren’t spending a lot of time hanging around in the yard. Buy the time they start spending time outside, the pile has heated up, been turned a few times and lost the odor.

Speed up the breakdown of materials in your compost pile by aerating every other day. Water it, keeping it damp as a squeezed out sponge, not soggy. Cover the pile with black plastic to increase the heat.

PH

The pH content is calculated on a scale of 0 – 14 with 7, the midpoint being neutral. Soil above 7 is ‘sweet’ or alkaline. A pH below 7 is ‘sour,’ or acidic. You can test your soil ‘s pH by placing a few spoons of it in a Mason jar. Add an equal amount of white vinegar. Shake it up and give it a listen. The louder the fizzing, the higher, (more alkaline) the pH.

• Most plants like it a bit acidy – 6.0 – 6.8.

• If soil is too acid and needs sweetening, you can add wood ashes (from wood stove or fireplace), bone meals, crushed eggshells, ground or crushed oyster shells.

• If the soil is too alkaline, add pine needles, coffee grounds, and oak dust, peat moss or cottonseed meal (I guess you’d have to buy that, I don’t even know what it is).

• Many people believe they must send their soil away to get it tested for ph. Others purchase kits at garden supply shops. Since ph affects the well being of all plants, it may be a good idea to check it properly. I do not. I assume my soil is acidy because of the area where I live.
  
• If I add a plant that needs an alkaline soil, I try to augment the area around the plant. A bit of crumbled or broken cement can add alkalinity to the soil near a particular plant.

 
     You can’t be real picky when you want something for nothing. That’s where creativity comes in. You’ll be adding, thinning and transplanting year after year so your garden will always be changing which can be very exciting. Just remember to plant the taller stuff in the back. You can get all hung up on colors or ‘garden styles’ or you can go willy-nilly and wind up with a beautiful cottage garden.

     Go to the library or check online to help understand how best to take care of the plants that you get. I mistakenly believed that Shasta daisy roots spread and one year was hell-bent on deadheading. Shasta daisies drop seeds. So, I disappeared Grandpa’s Shasta daisies. Now, Grandpop had been gone 27 long years and it broke my heart to lose his lovely flowers. I got other Shasta daisies but they weren’t Grandpop’s.

     There are many sources of free plants. Once you get the hang of hit, you’ll have so many free plants, soon, you’ll be giving some away! The best sources are family, friends, and neighbors. A lot of people need to thin their perennials or divide bulbs. They’d much rather give the excess away than throw it away.

     We still have my husband’s grandfather’s yarrow and I still have Auntie’s spearmint. I don’t care what they say about spearmint taking over. (Actually, Auntie was kind of bossy)  Auntie’s mother, my great-grandmother, cultivated this spearmint. Auntie was born in 1878. Nuff said.

• Seeds from perennials, biennials and annuals. Most folks let a few flowers go to seed and will be glad to give you some. Marigolds, zinnias, cleomes, flax and alyssum are easily grown from seed.

• Gifts – Ask anyone who wants to give you a gift to give you a perennial plant or gift certificate to a garden center or nursery.

• Cuttings – when I pruned one of my rose bushes one year, I shoved a couple of tips in the soil. Noting fancy. Low and behold, it grew and I had several lovely little rose bushes to trade! Learn to take cuttings properly and go to town. Keep a sharp eye on your neighbor’s pruning habits.

• Plant societies often offer free plant exchanges.

• Cheap plants – Public gardens, local farms, community plant sales can be a source of inexpensive plants.

• Banana trees.  Sooner or later, you’re going t run into somebody who has a banana tree that produces ‘babies’ and will force you to take one. Soon, every home in America will have a banana tree out front.

Mulch breaks down to enrich and texturinze your soil. It keeps moisture in during dry seasons. But mulch can be quite expensive if you buy the number of bags that some people need even for a relatively small garden.

Many municipalities offer free mulch as well as compost to area residents. Once discarded leaves, tree debris, and brush are gound up and used to improve gardens. The last time I went to the dump, there was quite a crowd of happy people shoveling mulch into thier pickup trucks. I drive a mini van so I took out the back seat and lined the area with heavy plastic.

     A flower garden is so interesting when decorative elements are added to compliment the design. It may take years to locate the items you like, so, every item has a bit of a story to it. I wanted to sweeten a bit of soil around a particular plant and decided that a piece of cement might leach lime (okay, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t) and low and behold, found a hunk of busted-off sidewalk curbing on Surf Ave. in Coney Island. How cool is that?

     Sources are endless to the creative person. Once other like-minded folks discover your interest, you’ll be surprised at their generosity. One morning I went into my yard to discover an old salvaged channel marker (which looks kind of like a mine and is almost scary) deposited there as a surprise by a friendly salvage maven as a wacky surprise!

Other sources:

• Rocks – as hard as it is to believe some people don’t want rocks! You can do them a favor by taking them off their hands.  Rocks can be useful as edging, steps, small tables or bases for containers. Larger rocks can almost be viewed as sculpture. Developments and building sites often have large piles of rocks shoved aside and will often let you take some.

• Bamboo – as a decorative element or plant. Bamboo often overgrows. People want to get rid of it or at least thin it out and won’t mind you digging up shoots to plant or saw some down. Just ask first. You can make beautiful fencing, dates or trellises with cut bamboo.

• Lumber – excess lumber left over from projects can be put to use. I took a couple of 4x4 posts and two 2x6’s cut a curve at the ends and stained them a lovely dark blue.  The resulting trumpet creeper covered arch stands at the entry to my yard,

• Fence sections make nice trellises.

• Old folding ladder look charming with flowers growing up them.

• Old chairs – make a fairy chair or set a container of flowers on the seat.

• Baskets – everybody has an old basket or two lying around. It makes a homey container or, set in the garden, a support for leggy plants.

• Found objects are the sculptural ornamentation of the free garden. Old tools, architectural salvage, any old thing can be used to add interest to your garden.

     Once you get into the whole Free Garden way of thinking, new ideas abound. It become almost a game and the joy of finding a new freebee far exceeds the pleasure derived from just going to a store and buying something. So, happy free gardening, get mooching!