Home and Garden Repairs

A bountiful, lush garden is the stuff of dreams for many who simply cannot afford to plant a range of expensive trees or ornamental flowering plants. If you want a garden without the hefty price tag, check out this frugal gardener's quick plant buying guide.

Select plants that share the love

If your garden budget is very limited, consider asking your friends and family if you can take cuttings from their flourishing plants to get your garden started. When buying plants, selecting plants that self-propagate is a great way to get the most bang for your buck. Many succulents and cactuses can be propagated easily by taking small cuttings or offsets and promoting root growth in a nutrient-rich cactus potting mix. As a budget-conscious bonus, a succulent garden is a wonderful water-wise yet evergreen solution to keep your water bill low. Agaves are very visually-pleasing, hardy plants that produce pups that can be easily separated. Chinese evergreen, snake plant and coleus are similarly simple to propagate from cuttings, as are many herbs, including rosemary, thyme, sage, borage and lavender. For a more colourful self-propagating garden, consider hydrangeas, nasturtiums, fuchsias, African violets, sunflowers and geraniums. For an extra saving, buy your self-propagating plants in bulk from your local wholesale nursery.

Put your leftovers in the ground

Adding your kitchen scraps to your compost is excellent for turning waste into useful nutrients for your plants. Planting your kitchen scraps, however, gives you a new edible garden without spending a cent! For the best and tastiest results, stick to planting organic fruit and vegetable scraps. Help the root end of leeks, celery, lemongrass, spring onions and shallots regrow by keeping them in water and sunlight inside for a few days before planting into composted and mulched soil. Growing potatoes and sweet potatoes from tubers is an easy, cost-effective and low-maintenance way of providing a generous harvest of food for your frugal family.

Join forces to buy in bulk

To truly benefit from the savings you can make when buying in bulk, join forces with a few friends or family members when you buy plants for your garden. Alternatively, you might like to put an appeal on your local Facebook Buy, Swap, Sell page for local frugal gardeners who'd like to chip in for a bulk nursery order. Group buying in this way is a great way to shop local, save cash and even meet new like-minded friends.

For more information on selecting affordable plants for your frugal home garden, chat with your wholesale nursery specialists today for expert advice. You can also click here for info on this topic.