by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Architectural salvage yards can be a great source of inspiration and materials to create a unique garden style, whether it's decorative elements like birdhouses or sundials or structural such as a trellis or pergola.
However, you often do not have to go to such places even, and in some ways I would even advise against spending your hard earned money at the architectural salvage yards. Much of what you can use in the way of salvaged materials can be found deposited all around the place, whether parks and open spaces or the wider countryside.
In a way, I guess, I am lucky that in my day-job I come across all manner of things abandoned and fly tipped that can be upcycled for use in the garden as planters and other uses.
My primary object in my garden is the growing of food, with next year adding also some cut flowers to the story, and I am looking at growing everything as much as possible above grounds, as tending such growing areas is easier. I am not getting any younger, you know.
As my gardening is for food growing primarily, bar the outside area of the house where I like to have some decorative planters, of sorts, which even include wheelbarrows, for plants and flowers to make the place look somewhat nice, I look for what can be used as planters, from bathtubs and old sinks, over builder's bags to old car tires.
The latter if they are tubeless radial tires should never be used for planters for the growing of food of any kind. Steel belted radial tires contain cadmium which is a heavy metal and will be taken up by the food crops and thus by you eating those crops. It is an accumulative poison to the human system.
Planters
Urns, old stone watering troughs, terracotta pipes, and chimney flues (some of the old ones are really spectacular in design) make ideal planters and some can be used to make container water gardens. Old claw foot bathtubs and even the modern fiberglass ones can be transformed into planters and, if you wanted, into miniature ponds and water gardens, for decorative and wildlife purposes.
Builder's bags, those one ton bags (and also half-ton and smaller still), made from woven polypropylene are very strong (they are made to hold heavy weights) and nowadays are no longer taken back by the suppliers. Thus they are destined for the landfill and you can do yourself and the environment a good turn by rescuing and repurposing then into planters.
I find the best way top deal with those bags is to fold the sides down too half-height and then fill with soil. The latter, should it ever compact a little too much, is easy to loosen up again and with a little addition of soil enhancer, whether charcoal- or bracken-based, they will grow anything.
Abandoned shopping carts, whether metal or plastic, as many are by now in the USA, make great movable garden planters. Line bottom and sides with rubble sacks or such like and then fill with soil and – bingo – a great planter that can be moved about if you need it to get more sun or less or have to clean underneath, etc.
The shopping cart idea is not one of my original ones; I saw it at some of the community garden projects in the USA with vegetables growing in great abundance in them.
In my day-job I keep finding such shopping carts abandoned at a more or less regular basis and up until the time that I took pity on them and began converting them into movable garden planters the council had to pay for having them removed. So now there is no need to trash them and I get a nice number of planters. The more the merrier.
And this is by no means an exhaustive list as to what you could all use for platers. Some folks are using old white goods, washing machines, etc.
Trellises
A number of plants in your garden, both food and ornamental ones, like to grow on trellises, whether beans, squash, cucumbers, peas, or gourds, or ornamental plants, such as sweet peas, honeysuckle, etc.
A trellis can be made from just about anything that vines can climb on. Decorative wrought iron gates and fence panels, orchard and library ladders, window frames, and old lampposts are just a few ideas.
If you can happen to come across abandoned bicycles there too is trellis material there and all the frames that are no good that I have found – some bikes have been or are being rebuilt – and from which everything salvageable has been removed, will be thus employed.
Being able to weld both steel and aluminum might be a handy skill to have and having the welder would be good too but there are other ways of making trellises and such out of old bicycle frames and wheels.
Cold Frames
Make a cold frame out of old windows. Not that difficult to build with a little thought and planning. Plans and ideas can be found all over the Internet for such small greenhouses. Bigger ones can also be built using old windows. For ideas look at the catalogs of some of the suppliers of such greenhouses. The small upright ones that look a little like a cupboard can certainly be recreated from windows.
Tires
Having mentioned tires earlier I shall revisit them here as a separate entity.
Tires, whether car, van, truck or tractor, can all find uses in the garden though ideally not where they would come into contact with growing produce.
However, they can be used to create a variety of landscapes, can be used as retaining walls for flower growing areas and so one.
In addition to that they can even be made into interesting water features if one has the intent of doing so. Three slightly different sized tires, fixed together and sealed so as to avoid the water running inside, and then with a pipe in the center bringing up the water.
We are here, primarily, talking about the bubbling brook kind of fountain rather than the geyser kind.
I saw this done recently on the Saltex Exhibition though it was done to show the permeability of a road surfacing product rather than the water features themselves but... a very nice idea nevertheless.
I am sure you can find many more used of salvaged materials in your garden if you but put your thinking cap on.
© 2010
