Reuse, Recycle, Reclaim; Accessorise Your Garden On A Budget At The RHS Chelsea
Flower Show
Within the gorgeous gardens, perfect plant displays and great gardening accessory
stands some clever ways and inspirational ideas to brighten up outside spaces on
a budget are emerging at the world’s premier gardening event, the 2009 RHS Chelsea
Flower Show, sponsored by Marshalls.
As ever the RHS, organiser of the world’s most famous gardening event, and leading
designers and nurserymen are highlighting relevant gardening solutions for topical
issues affecting us today. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show will showcase recycling initiatives
to add interest to the garden; how grow your own can save money and RHS advisors
will be on hand to provide top money saving tips too.
“Most people know that investing in your garden adds value to your property,” says
Alex Baulkwill, RHS Chelsea Flower Show Manager “so, clever ideas to improve your
outside space, without having to spend too much makes sense in the current climate
too.”
1984 is a modern urban retreat, wildlife hotspot, kitsch cost effective design.
In this garden recycled materials are used for a sculptural water feature and another
small garden, The Giles Landscapes ‘Fenland Alchemist’ Garden also highlights that
gardens don’t have to be expensive and promotes ‘foraging’ and using old unwanted
materials.
Credit Munch, urges you to grow your own to save money and achieve a healthy lifestyle
and taking grow your own to another level is the Perfume Garden, designed by Laurie
Chetwood and Patrick Collins. In this garden pick out flowers that could be used
to grow your own perfume.
Within the three RHS Credit Crunch Gardens, designed by one of the UK’s best designers,
Sarah Eberle, The Overdrawn Artist’s Garden is made entirely from scrap and reclaimed
materials. Hard materials, furniture and features are made from items found at the
local scrap yard and the paving is made from steel grid panels filled with sands,
gravels and crushed CD’s.
Over one hundred floral exhibitors will be in the Great Pavilion with millions of
seeds on sale and advice to propagate and grow plants from seedlings. The wealth
of experience at Chelsea offers one of the best money saving tips; advice to help
your plants thrive in the garden!
The RHS team of advisors will be at Chelsea throughout the show and a visit to them
could provide a wealth of money saving tips. Here are Head of Advisory, Guy Barter,
shares his top five budget gardening tips:
- Small herbaceous plants grow quickly so you don’t need to buy the biggest pot. However
congested bigger pots often contain plants that can be split into two or more sections
each of which will quickly make a substantial new plant.
- Sow annuals now for summer colour, but remember that biennials such as foxgloves,
hollyhocks and sweet williams, are also sown in early summer for next year and are
especially good value.
- Most tender plants, fuchsia, marguerites and pelargoniums for example, strike easily
from cuttings. As well as straightforward scrounging, consider trading some of your
annual and biennial seedlings for cuttings from friends’ tender plants.
- If daunted by the expense of buying new bulbs for next year consider watering and
feeding spent bulbs well in pots to encourage them to grow well enough to lay down
good flowers for next year. Bulbs in the soil should have their seed pod removed
and their foliage left undisturbed so that they have the best chance to put by enough
resources to flower next year.
- A quick and easy way to propagate many shrubs and climbers, and get quite large
plants, is to layer them. Here a shoot is bent to ground level and after lightly
wounding it by twisting the stem, buried with soil being held in place with two
U-shaped wire pins made from an old clothes hanger. With luck it will have rooted
by autumn, or certainly by this time next year and if you can use a largish shoots
the plant will be a lot bigger than one from a cutting.