Gardening with Garbage

As the novice gardener gets their hands well and truly dirty, and begins to learn the wonderful art of gardening, it often quickly becomes apparent for the need to be green and to recycle. As knowledge and experience increases so to does the realisation that the amateur gardener can produce their own compost, can reuse broken pots for drainage, can find an endless amount of projects to recycle their garden waste without the need for skips and visits to the local dump.

It is easy to trip down to the local garden centre, to spend a small fortune and return to the garden laden with plants, shrubs and wonderfully strange ornaments that had never been conceived or even crossed your mind before. Though the modern fad of instant gardening, that is opulently buying fully mature plants, getting landscapers in, and getting a quick fix, shows no sign of retiring, many are looking to the future of saving the pennies and saving the Earth. And it doesn't take a lot of imagination to recycle our waste, to reuse our garbage, and to save ourselves some money in the process.

After the usual trains of thought have been followed such as using toilet rolls as seed pots, broken china and pots for drainage, coffee bean remnants for deterring slugs, there is no need to not think on a grander scale. Skip raiding can soon turn into an enjoyable and addictive pastime. Before long the eye becomes trained to know where and when to look and passing more than a fleeting glance over someone else's trash becomes typically norm. Obviously it is important to ask before you remove anything, but you have a reasonable argument to claim the materials you want for free, after all, they are being discarded by the owner. Think of the average skip - bricks, rubble, old windows, but you can use it all. Bricks are beautiful to line pathways, to build raised beds, to stand pots on to aide drainage and create tiers. Rubble can easily be used for hardcore if undertaking fresh landscaping such as putting in a new driveway. Windows can form mini greenhouses, tops of cold frames or perhaps a unique garden table or feature for visitors to envy. As with all rubbish, the discerning eye needs to be used, don't simply horde everything you may ever need. A lead lined, quartered window can be very appealing but a modern double glazed panel is going to be far from aesthetically pleasing in the garden. However, with a little thought, and a lot of creativity it can be surprising what can be achieved.

Skips are the new gardening centre....let your imagination go wild!