Gardening on a budget

Landscaping on a budget

Many people believe that a great garden is an expensive venture reserved for the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you make the right design decisions and prioritise what is really important to you, you can have a garden that suits your needs without breaking into the bank.

Today, I will offer a few tips on how you can bring your garden to life on a limited budget. Start by dropping the notion that your budget it too small to do anything meaningful. Given time, everything is possible.

Plan

Before you descend on your garden with a hoe and a hammer, take some time to strategise. Brainstorming and planning may not magically save you extra shillings, but it will sure reduce your chances of running into costly mistakes. A good plan helps you to get the most out of the limited budget.

Developing a basic plan is not as difficult as it may sound. All you need to do is define the boundaries of your garden and begin making decisions about what goes where. Planning also involves researching your requirements extensively and evaluating your options carefully.

Many people pump loads of cash into items that don’t really add value to their outdoor lifestyles.

The most common culprits are extensive and inefficient precast concrete parking that are seldom fully utilised and unnecessarily huge boundary walls.

Look within

If there is a bare spot on which you need to replant, look within the garden before you head to the nursery. It will often surprise you how many plants can be propagated from parts of existing ones.

Many others produce seeds which can be used to grow new ones.

If, however, you have to head to the nursery, go for bare root seedlings as opposed to potted seedlings.

These usually cost a lot less but require a little more care during handling before planting. You could also look for alternative sources of plants such as construction sites that are being cleared in your neighbourhood.

Recycle

Before you throw away anything into the trashcan, think. Many objects can often be reused directly or modified into garden elements and décor.

Shoes, broken crockery, old furniture and fittings such as bathtubs and wash-hand basins can be converted into planters in the garden at no cost at all.

Kitchen waste and lawn trimmings make free fertiliser when composted. By merely accumulating them in a pit and turning the pile ones in a while, you can save thousands of shillings just like that. What is more? Salvaged materials from a disused building can find new life when used to construct a garden structure at a fraction of the cost of new materials.

Do-It-Yourself

Why not, there are many garden chores that you can easily execute by yourself without hired labour. Pruning and harvesting fruits and flowers make for very good exercise during the weekend. For smaller gardens, the list grows even longer. You can water, weed, mulch and even mow all by yourself.

There are also hundreds of Do-It-Yourself books, magazines and websites which give very simple instructions on how to put together garden structures and features.

Go through some of these and find out what you can pull off on your backyard. First-timers are often amazed at how good they can be with their hands.