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Gardening doesn't have to be an expensive hobby. Some of the most beautiful gardens I've ever grown cost me nothing but sweat and sore muscles – and paid off with the kind of satisfaction you'll never get from a paid-for landscape. Throughout the spring and summer, I have the pleasure of tending the miniature rose bush I got for Mother's Day six years ago, the Virginia bluebells that grew in my mother's garden, the border of hostas that my son dug up from behind a neighboring store (with the store owner's permission, of course!) It is a found garden – a friendship garden – a special garden that was never planned, and is all the more beautiful because of it.
Building a Found Garden takes a bit of foresight – but just a bit. To start, you'll need three things:
A Sunny Spot In Your Yard
Location is everything. Find a spot in your yard that gets plenty of sun during the day – at least 6-8 hours of full sun is ideal. If you don't have a spot like that, though, you can work around it by being careful in your selection of plants. If the spot you want to fill with flowers is shady, look in other shady gardens for plants that do well in the shade.
Simple Garden Tools
A spade and a rake are all the tools you'll need to get your garden going. If you're really skimping it, and only can afford one tool – get a 4-tine pitchfork. It's one of the most versatile gardening tools ever created. You can loosen and turn soil with it, shake out the biggest of the rocks, and even use it to mound earth for trenches.
Friends, Neighbors and Vacant Lots
The beauty of a found garden is how it grows and what it comes to mean. If a neighbor has a beautiful garden, chances are good that they'd be happy to share a few cuttings for your garden. The woods behind your house or the vacant lot across the street can yield a bumper crop of stones to build walls and borders. Keep your eyes open for plants along the side of the road.
Building a Border From Found Materials
Borders and walls are an easy way to set off a flower bed or garden patch from the rest of your yard. You can use broken paving stones, bricks, and construction blocks – any material that is weatherproof. Simply dig a trench around your garden perimeter that is 2-3 inches wider than the base of the stones or bricks, stand them on end, and pack dirt around them.
Acquiring Plants for a Found Garden
If you have gardeners among your acquaintances, you won't have to look far at all for flowers, border plants, bushes and more. If you do your building during “gardening season”, you can take advantage of the cultivation efforts of friends and neighbors. If you notice a neighbor out in his garden transplanting or moving plants, don't be shy. Ask for root divisions or cuttings for your own garden. True gardeners believe in sharing the wealth.
DO NOT dig up plants from public gardens, wildlife sanctuaries, along highways or in public parks. It's illegal in nearly every state, and many states have protected species of flowers and plants. Stick to friends, neighbors and properties whose owners are known to you.
Among the best plants to propagate from root divisions are:
Hosta – Shade-tolerant perennials that make beautiful borders or ground cover, hostas are easily among the most popular border plants in the United States. They spread so easily that gardeners often thin them by root division.
Iris and day lilies – Like hostas, irises and day lilies spread quickly. Gardeners often thin them in the autumn to prepare for a spring growing season, and are nearly always willing to part with a few root divisions. Plant in the fall and let them winter over – they'll bloom in the spring.
Virginia bluebells – Wildly beautiful, the delicate violet flowers of the Virginia bluebell open in the sun, and close in the shade. They also grow like wildfire wherever you plant them.
We had a large newly created yard and I have a love of flowers so I naturally desired a flower garden. The problem was that the fill that was trucked in to create this yard was all chunks of blacktop and concrete with a light sprinkling of top soil to cover the chunks. There was no digging into the dirt without hitting something solid. We couldn't even drive in a tent stake.
The town workers were scraping the sides of the roads after a long winter of sanding icy and snowy roads. They had two loads of roadside dirt they wanted to dump that looked like pretty good dirt so I let them dump it in a pile in the back of the yard.
After staring at the pile for some time, I began to see a fish pond and perennial garden in the dirt. My husband and I started working moving the dirt around to form a bowl in the center and grading the dirt away where the flowers would be planted. A flower bed would be wonderful, but with a pond in the center it will be even better.
Because we didn't know what we were doing, we used a grey plastic tarp for a liner. It worked well for two years. The spring of the third year we replaced it with rubber pond liner which will last many years. We purchased a pump and a filter so we could keep fish.
We had a fairly large pile of limestone rocks left over from an old rock wall. These rocks became the border for our perennial garden. My sister has horses and a nice pile of old horse manure. She graciously brought me a pickup truck load of manure which we mixed in the dirt. There is a recycling plant nearby that makes compost so we got a load of it to help improve the soil.
Another sister was cleaning out her perennial beds in the fall and throwing out a lot of overgrown plants which made great starter plants for me. I filled the back of my truck and brought them home to their new bed. I placed the plants in the ground for the winter. In the spring I divided the plants up and spread them out and had a great start on my flower bed.
Each year since then I add a few plants purchased at flower shows, the grocery store, and nurseries. I've also traded many plants with others happy to get different plants than they have. Now, seven years later, I am enjoying seven flower beds created basically the same way with beautiful flowers blooming from April through October.