| GARDENING...Enjoying the sunshine...Saving money growing your own flowers or food...A sense of accomplishment...Ideas to inspire your gardens |
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Decorating the Outdoors
Making something beautiful from nothing in particular is an exciting project. Using free or practically free plants makes creating a garden all the more fun! Plants & Flowers - Free or almost free! Spring and autumn are the perfect times to pick a bunch of packaged seed for next to nothing. Local stores have seed packets for 10 cents each from the previous year, and they still sprout just fine. |
 | Nasturtiums have bright flowers, trail like a vine, and love partial sun. Leave the flowers on the stem and watch the seed grow until it is pea-sized. Pluck it and plant it. Easy as 1-2-3, with a little patience. I let about half my flowers wilt and grow seed, and the other half I bring inside or enjoy on the vine until they wilt. Pick off the wilted blooms that you are not leaving for seed (referred to as "dead-heading" the flowers) so that the plants will keep blooming. |
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Geraniums are fantastic - find a friend with a nice geranium bush and ask for a stem or two. If you're lucky, you might find a place where you can collect as many as you'd like. Or buy just one geranium plant from the garden shop. Just break off stems, stick them into the soil, and water. I water mine often when establishing the plants. Once they have nice thick stems and plenty of leaves, I water infrequently. Geraniums flower more often with less water! The pink geraniums pictured here are accented with Sweet Alyssum. It was a fluke that my window box planter turned out this way. I had a lot of luck with the alyssum on the deck above, and when the flowers turned to seed, the seed fell down into the planter below. Soon enough, the plants above were springing back to life [such is the advantage of living in sunny Southern California!] and the white petite flowers of the alyssum really perked up my box of geraniums. |
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Just one Marigold flower, left to wilt and dry on the stem, holds about as many seeds as an entire packet you purchase at the store! So for these flowers, I just leave a few flowers to dry to seed and dead-head the rest so there are constant blooms.
Red geraniums, orange & yellow nasturtiums, and orange marigolds make a
terrific, low-maintenance
garden combo. None really need much water! |
 Nearby basket now filling up nicely with more Sweet Alyssum! |
 | Philodendron must be the easiest indoor plant to keep alive - just ask my family! Although I had quite a reuptation of being able to finish off the most hardy of plants, this time I've managed to take a single plant, snip off a number of vines, making sure there's a "root bud" on each, and stick them into glass containers. So many glass containers from individual sized soda bottles, jelly jars, and pasta sauce jars are being sold with embossed patterns. After soaking off the label, the container is attractive and watching through the clear glass to see plant cutting take root is educational, too! We have about 15 - 20 new plants from one that cost about 99 cents on sale. Once the roots are firmly established, the plant can be moved into an attractive pot, just add soil. If you scour yard sales and flea markets, or just keep watch for good 3/$1.00 sales on clay pots, you should be able to fill your home with greenery in no time at all! |
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Gardening Tips
Want a low cost, ground cover that is like planting a treat?
 Strawberries! We planted 4 small plants and within one season, the entire garden area was covered and we have to thin out the plants. Strawberries multiply by sending out runners with a baby plant attached. Clip the runner and plant the baby wherever you want. I've moved some of the small plants to other garden areas and they're doing great! Put them around roses since both need plenty of water, and it's nice not to have to weed - the strawberry plants really fill in like a ground cover.The bonus? Bright delicious berries every year, maybe more often if you live in a warm climate!
DOWN THE GARDEN PATH....
Really personalize your garden by making paver stones from concrete. Use the large thin plastic saucers from pots as the mold for stepping stones, quick-dry concrete, and lots of creativity to personalize each step.
1. Stepping stone project for kids! Have kids? Grandkids? Nieces or nephews? Let them draw a simple picture in the wet concrete, press in their handprint (always a favorite!), decorate the stone with broken pieces of ceramic tile, smoothed glass pieces commonly used in flower vases these days, or special keepsakes, like seashells or fancy rocks.
2. Establish a theme for your garden. Mine is "Inspiration" - so I will write one word of inspiration on each of my stepping stones when I create them.
CREATE AN ESCAPE
Gardens have a magical way of transforming a drab spot into something colorful and alive. My sister has a rosemary bush in her backyard that is amazing... it's large, like a shrub, and oh, so fragrant! A wrought iron bench right in front allows you to sit and enjoy the wonderful scent.
How about a WATER FEATURE?! Ask at your garden center and find just the right plants for your area so that you don't have to do a thing to maintain a container "pond". Lovely!
One of my earliest memories is of my grandparent's home and the waterfall which emptied out into a fish pond surrounded by pansies. To this day pansies make me happy when I see them! Waterfalls are now relatively inexpensive to create from almost anything on hand. Pumps are generally available for under $30. and you can use materials you have on hand, such as clay pots & watering cans.
Portable Waterfall:
I saw an idea that hid a pump under an inverted clay pot in a wheelbarrow [that had been sealed watertight]. On top of the clay pot was a succession of smaller pots, one leading down to the next. The water was pumped up to the top pot and then fell to each of the next pots. I think the whole thing cost less than $50. and not only that, it's portable - just roll the wheelbarrow wherever you want! The portable waterfall can be made with any style fountain.
Inexpensive Birdbath:
Turn a large clay pot upside down. Place the saucer right side up on the bottom of the inverted pot. Viola! Birdbath that can even be decorated with clay pot paints found at your local craft store. Make sure to hose out the saucer often and keep fresh water inside.
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GARDENING RESOURCES
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Copyright Debbie Nelson, Deb's Clever Ideas 2001-2004, All rights reserved.