How to Build your Garden on a Budget
The joy of gardening is that it suits every pocket. Landscaping a small area with choice materials and lavish, mature plants is expensive; by contrast, using inexpensive materials, propagating as many plants as possible, and being prepared to wait is the best way to develop a fine garden on a shoestring.
Interim measures have their uses: beds can be filled with annuals until you can afford more expensive shrubs; an arrangement of pots can provide the focal point until a statue or sculpture has been added. For example, an architectural Cordyline indivisa can be set in a tall or raised pot with pots of scented flowering heliotropium, such as the fine ‘Chatsworth’, ‘Princess Marina’ or ‘White Lady’, and the yellow-orange flowers of echeveria around the base.
From the gardening point of view phasing the work has many advantages, but the question is which major structures should you complete first? Clearly the answer depends on your own priorities but it is logical to begin with the basic layout. Lawns, pathways, main borders and the seating area provide the garden skeleton and take priority. Later, when your pocket has recovered, you can add a little more flesh to the bones by adding special features like a pond, conservatory, gazebo and so on. Usually, the biggest cost item is the hard landscaping: structures such as walls, terraces, buildings and paving. There may be earth-moving exercises too, such as digging ponds or creating different levels. These, especially if done by contractors, will be costly but are one-off expenses.
Inexpensive plants
Mature trees are the costliest plants to buy, and the bigger they are, the dearer. In effect you are buying the time taken to grow specimens. If you are prepared to nurture them, most small, immature plants grow very quickly and are much cheaper. The important point to remember is that they will grow just as large as their bigger, more expensive counterparts, and need spacing out according to their potential and not their current size.
The cheapest plants of all are those that you propagate yourself. Shrubs grow surprisingly fast from cuttings and many are easy to root. Space is too limited to cover the subject here but there are dozens of specialist books on propagation, so do have a go. The skill needed to strike cuttings is so basic that anyone can learn it in minutes. Essentially, all that is required is a piece of healthy young stem, a pot of compost, and a warm, moist atmosphere that prevents the shoot wilting. Within a few weeks you should have a new plant.
A clear plastic bag and a windowsill will suffice for small numbers of cuttings, but results are quicker and better with an electrically-heated propagator. The most basic types are widely available in a range of sizes and are easily affordable. The crudest consist of a large open tray with low sides, a plastic cover and a heating pad. If you have a cold frame or a cold greenhouse you can wait for decent summer temperatures around 60°F (15.5°C) and raise cuttings there. Place them in a sheltered, shady position, and remember to close the greenhouse to keep in the heat. A cold frame is not essential when it comes to acclimatizing the young plants to outside conditions but it helps. Alternatively, stand the pots outside for an increasing amount of time during the warmest part of the day; eventually you should be able to leave them out over a mild night – but do not rush the process.
Nor should you be afraid to ask neighbours for cuttings of plants or for seed. You should have a good success rate with both, as with layering (bending a branch down to soil level, pegging it in place, waiting for it to develop its own root system, and then separating this new, young plant from its parent), dividing one plant into several (each with top growth and roots), and stooling (building up soil around the base of a japonica or lilac, for example, which encourages rooting higher up the stem so that ready-rooted pieces can be removed and replanted).
