Gardening on a budget - Plants!

Its no secret that gardening is not a cheap pastime. Seeds and compost are costly, not to mention greenhouses and aggregates but there are a variety of ways to make your garden look good without breaking the bank.

Plants! Lets face it, if you go to the garden centre to buy plants you are going to be paying a lot for them. Everyone has to get their margins and also there are some plants that will take a few years from sowing until they flower so that's a long commitment from the grower. Its much cheaper to grow from seed, but while this is a popular method and for the most part pretty effective, unless you have the room, such as a decent size greenhouse, preferably one without marauding slugs and snails poised waiting to scoff your seedlings you may find that you can't quite get the best conditions for every plant to grow up into a big healthy specimen. The same with cuttings, which can be very much hit and miss on whether they strike or not (frequently a miss with me but not with my mother who has an infinitely greener thumb than I do) but depending on species can again be a slow process.

My preferred method for increasing stock is simply to divide what I have already. I have been known to take even quite small shop bought plants and cut them in half when I get them home. Traditionally, division in carried out in either autumn as the plants are winding down, but there is still enough warmth and moisture in the soil to enable them to establish, or spring when the plant's energy is awoken and it stands a good chance of taking off.

A great way to get your hands on plants you don't have but like the look of is from a friend's garden. I don't mean heading in with a trowel under cover of darkness though, but waiting till autumn when your pals are shifting, lifting and dividing their own collection or are at very least happy to pull up a stem with a section of root attached ready to pot on... a word of caution though, label them straight away as, especially with herbaceous perennials, once they disappear for winter its very hard to identify your plants from just a dead twig!