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Gardening on the Cheap; great sources of plants and tools

13/7/2014

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Fabulous sources of cheap and sometimes free plants planters, pre-loved tools and more for your garden include:
  • Garage sales
  • Trash and treasure Markets
  • Junk yards (often give away old tyres)
  • Community garden food swaps
  • Permaculture courses and guilds seed saving and plant donations and swaps
  • The Friends of the Ballarat Botanic Gardens Nursery (open Tuesday afternoons and even cheaper for members
  • Garden clubs, such as the Horticulture Society, Society for Growing Native Plants or the Ballarat Cactus and Succulent Society.
  • Landcare planting days on your property
  • Council Hard Rubbish Collections (How lucky you are if you live in an area where these are an annual event!) Great for tools, pots and sometimes entire plants!
  • Fortnightly council greenwaste collections, where available. (I have actually salvaged agaves and more from greenwaste bins!)
  • Disguarded plants outlets at some nurseries
  • Admiring and being given plant cuttings, bulbs and rhizomes from gardeners in your community and further afield.
  • Ebay and Gumtree
  • Your own kitchen and wardrobe for fantastic recycled planters like disused containers, old boots and string.
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Gardening on the Cheap; freebies from friends and neighbours

13/7/2014

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PictureA back garden created almost completely with freebies from family and friends!
So you want to establish or develop your garden, but don't have the budget to stretch to expensive purchases at plant nurseries?

The wonderful thing about gardening, is that when you begin as a gardener, you are entering a community of fellow gardeners.


I have yet to meet a gardener that is reluctant to pass on a plant cutting, bulb, or rhyzome, to another gardener. It's the ultimate outreach program, that begins in and with your very own garden.

Nothing beats seeing a plant you love, being loved, just as much by a neighbour, friend or relative, unless of course someone has actually stolen that plant from your garden!

Family members, friends, neighbours and even total strangers are all potential sources of free plants. Let people know you are beginning, or developing your garden and or vegie patch and your will find many free plants will be offered to you as a result of them offering you cuttings, bulbs, rhizomes, and even giving you gifts of plants.

Over the years I have both been given and passed on cuttings, seeds, bulbs and even lovely plants by and to total strangers.

 I have given cuttings from my pomegranite, root offsets from my fig and rhizomes from my cannas to people walking round the neighbourhood that stop to admire my garden and begin to chat.

In Bolingbroke street, Pascoe Vale we operated an informal neighbourhood plant exchange to help establish, beautify and unify our street and build a genuine community of neighbours.

I have knocked on the doors of total strangers and asked for a piece of their "amazingus plantus" I have admired and never been knocked back.

I treasure plants that have been passed through our family, via grandparents, great aunts, parents and family friends.

Accessing free plants in this manner, will soon give, even a very new garden, a genuine sense of history!

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Gardening on the Cheap; plant divisions

13/7/2014

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You can save a fortune in your gardening, by propagating plants through division.

Dividing up a clump is amongst the easiest ways to get new plants. 

Some such as the strawberry runner are easy to take and establish, whereas with robust plants like bamboo, or bird of paradise, you may need to wield an axe, saw or crow bar!


Plants that lend themselves to division include:
  • Clumps of bulbs, such as dutch iris, daffodils and nerrines. Onions, garlic and chives,
  • Rhizamatoudis plants such as bird of paradise, canna lillies, bearded iris, and lambs ears. Jerusalem artichokes, artichokes and asparagus.
  • Plants that grow from runners, such as bamboo, and many grasses. Strawberries, raspberries, and members of the mint family.
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Gardening on the Cheap; Cuttings

13/7/2014

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You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to create a fabulous, inviting and colourful garden.

Many wonderful plants strike readily from cuttings. These include but are not exclusive to:
  • pelargoniums, 
  • lavender
  • rosemary
  • salvias
  • roses
  • the daisy family
  • many succulent species
  • brugmasias
  • lilacs
  • daphne
  • camelias
  • philedelphias
  • fig trees
  • olive trees
  • bay trees
  • currants
  • grapes
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    Author

    Fiona Ludbrook is the Client Services Director of Pets and Plants Ballarat. Now, entrepreneur and blogger, she was born and bred in Ballarat, but spent many years as a teacher in Melbourne’s
    Northern Suburbs.

    She has demonstrated a life-long passion and commitment to domestic pets, animal welfare and gardening, including increasing success and experience as a Permaculture Designer and chicken keeper. She also trained in journalism and is an avid writer and reader of non-fiction. 

    Fiona is an active member of the Ballarat Permaculture Guild, Friends of The Ballarat Botanic Gardens, Ballarat Cacti and Succulent Society, Animals Australia and the RSPCA.

    In her younger days, Fiona was an accomplished and prize winning equestrian.

    Fiona’s own garden is currently a work in progress and occasionally open for educational purposes.

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