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Cheap Tricks to Landscape Your Garden Without Spending the Earth
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Cheap Tricks to Landscape Your Garden Without Spending the Earth

Use simple landscaping devices in your backyard to create maximum impact with minimum spend

Carol Bucknell
Carol BucknellNovember 5, 2014
Houzz New Zealand Contributor. Journalist who lives in Auckland and specialises in writing about gardens, houses and design. Author of two books on garden design: Contemporary gardens of New Zealand and Big Ideas for Small Gardens both published by Penguin. I also design gardens and am a passionate gardener. Currently I write the garden pages for New Zealand magazine Your Home & Garden and contribute to NZ Gardener and NZ House & Garden magazines.
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It’s an all too familiar story. The landscaping budget is virtually non-existent because all the money went on the renovation or the build. If this sounds like you, don’t panic. There are plenty of things you can do to improve your garden without turning your bank balance red. There might be a little more work involved, but the results will be that much more satisfying. Just follow these easy tips for a garden that looks and feels good without blowing the budget.
Joanne Green Landscape & Interior
Hedge your bets
Hedges add crisp structure to a garden, can be trimmed to fill awkward shaped beds, are easy to look after and are useful in disguising unsightly weeds or plants past their best. Many hedging plants such as box, Choisya and lavender are easy to grow from cuttings which can save you a lot of money. If you’re after a simple, low-maintenance garden, hedges are your best bet.
Earth Matters Consulting
Add water
Water is an element that gives gardens a sense of exotic beauty like no other feature. And the great thing is you need very little of it to achieve that look. A lovely birdbath, water bowl or a large sealed pot with perhaps a miniature waterlily growing in it, will do the trick.
Yardstick Landscape Services
En masse
Bold massed plantings of one type of shrub or perennial is an easy way to create drama and interest in a garden. Buying small plants won’t break the budget and they’ll adapt more quickly than larger grades.
Jeni Lee
Become a DIY decorator
Make your own outdoor art using pebbles as shown here in this Kangaroo Island garden. You can also recycle industrial, marine and farming artefacts; make screens from pumice or driftwood and walls from old logs; craft mosaic walls and paths; make scarecrows or assemble old cutlery or shells for wind chimes; get the kids to paint a mural on the fence.
Nicholas Bray Landscapes
Cutting edge
Take cuttings from neighbours’ and friends’ gardens for free plants. Check out garden manuals for advice on best times to take cuttings and how to pot them. Easy plants to grow from cuttings include the beautiful hydrangea in this Sydney garden, pelargonium, abutilon, Iresine, fuchsia, most succulents and impatiens.
Go big with pots
Plants in tiny pots look tatty very quickly. Get rid of all those little containers of different shapes and sizes and replace with one or three large beautiful containers. Leave unplanted or go for something that complements their shape like the succulents here, sculptural cycads, graceful Lomandra or a clipped topiary.
Cultivart Landscape Design
Divide and conquer
Dividing perennial clumps is an easy, low-cost way to acquire new plants. Check out the gardens of those aforementioned kind friends and neighbours and ask them for divisions of perennial plants that you like. Perennials that are ideal for propagating by division include the variegated purple-flowering Liriope in this Perth garden, as well as Ajuga, agapanthus, aster, astilbe, Bergenia, canna, catmint, day lily, dianella, flax, many grasses, Hosta (when dormant), many irises, lamb’s ear, mondo grass, salvia and sedum.
Cultivart Landscape Design
Paint job
Paint is a low-cost, easy way to add excitement and colour to a garden. Use it as a focal point or to create unity by painting the different structures in the garden – shed, pergola, fence, edging, deck – the same colour. Choose a colour already used on the house to reinforce its connection to the garden.
Secret Gardens
Get real
Instead of wasting money and time trying to grow plants that are completely unsuited to the conditions of your garden get real and opt for those you know will thrive. That doesn’t mean you should restrict yourself only to native plants. If you live near the sea, for instance, plants that grow naturally in many other coastal regions around the world (such as the Mediterranean and South Africa) will do well in your garden.
Swell Homes
On the edge
Neatly trimming beds and lawns has immediate impact, giving gardens a defined, contemporary look. To make mowing easier consider using one of the many edging products that are available now, most within the scope of an average DIY enthusiast to install.


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