Needn’t Cost The Earth

In June Burbage Gardening Club welcomes Debbie Cooke, a passionate gardener for over 40 years, to talk about her experience in developing both economical and ecological ideas that we can use for our own gardening. Debbie has attended a wide number of garden design and horticultural courses, leading to exhibiting and winning medals at various horticultural and gardening shows including Chelsea. To find out more about Debbie do visit her website at www.creativegardendesign.co.uk or her Facebook page called Debbie Cooke – Creative Garden Design.

Key ideas:
Before throwing anything away ask yourself if you can repair, reuse, recycle, or repurpose the item. For example, make your own seed packets, labels and dibbers. Cold frames could be made from plastic boxes, old windows, and plastic bottles.

It is important not to let the garden look like Steptoe’s Yard so there does need to be some element of design. A simple way to achieve a coordinated look is to have a theme. A theme is an identity for the whole garden or just a border or window box. Examples of this are chic contemporary, colours, cottage garden, herb garden, kitchen garden, seaside, wildlife, and Japanese. In this way an item can seem to be belonging to the bigger picture. The only limitation is our imagination.

Things to consider from the ground up: surfaces and mulches, raised beds and border edges, plant supports, and quirky containers.

Thrifty plants: suggested plants include hellebore, primrose, pulmonaria, ajuga, geranium, sweetpea, alchemilla, borage, calendula, nasturtiums, sedum, leycentaria, and cyclamen.

Power of paint: paint is a preservative as well as a colour to help your theme.

Furniture and finishing touches: you could include a dustbin lid pond!

Overall Debbie provided plenty of ideas and encouragement for both a sustainable ecological and economical approach to gardening.