Cheap as Dirt: Save Money on Gardening

Garden centers offer a huge variety of plants to choose from, as well as books to help you design a beautiful botanical show, but the cost of creating the perfect garden showplace can be prohibitive. Here are some tips to help you craft the same floral sanctuary on a budget.

Dividing Perennial Plants

Perennial plants are a great investment. They come back year after year, require very little maintenance, and each year perennials typically become bigger. But if you have limited growing space in your yard, bigger is not necessarily better. You may eventually have to split some of your plants to limit their size, so that they work for your space. The tendency of perennials to occasionally need downsizing can be exploited to help you build a fantastic garden on the cheap.

Using Your Own Perennials

Over several growing seasons you can split your own plants, and use the extra stock to fill in other areas of your yard with more of that same variety. For example, it is very simple to slowly fill in a fence line with Black-eyed Susans, which both reseed and occasionally need dividing. Just a few plants, spaced sparsely the first year, can fill in over the course of just a couple growing seasons, to become a solid wall of fall color that comes back year after year.

Trade with Neighbors

You may not want more of the same in your garden, and that's where it pays to make friends with your gardening neighbors. Other gardeners will also occasionally have plants that need dividing (and you'll eventually need something to do with all those Black-eyed Susans). Also, if there are some plants that you grow from seed each year, such as vegetables, and have extra seedlings, these can be used as another green bargaining chip.

Let others in the neighborhood know which plants you may be dividing and giving away this growing season, and ask them to share any extra perennials that they may have on hand. Many perennials spread aggressively, and gardeners are often happy to get the extras off their hands.

Join a Garden Club

Garden clubs are a great way to expand your collection of plants, particularly the rare and interesting varieties that serious gardeners are more likely to take on. These clubs meet regularly and exchange helpful information, sometimes organize trips to tour area gardens or state and national botanical gardens, and best of all, garden clubs frequently have plant swaps!

Gardening Knowledge on the Cheap

You really don't need to purchase expensive gardening books to increase your expertise. The local library may have dozens of gardening guides, and the internet is also an excellent free resource. Garden club members often share books and magazine subscriptions as well.

So, although you will not be able to create a spectacularly garden instantly by dividing and swapping plants, you will, over time, be able to achieve this goal with patience and a little effort. And isn't this what gardening is all about?