Karl's Garden Blog

With some patience, time, and some solid ties with the community, you can easily landscape your next or current home for free.

I rent the home I live in right now. Actually, I split it with a roommate who’s rarely home. He lives mostly with his girlfriend in the next town over. One thing I absolutely can’t stand is living in a place that LOOKS like it’s being rented — you know, weeds in the lawn, untrimmed bushes, holes in the fence, blinds out of whack, lightbulbs out… the usual.

One thing that’s consistent with the houses in my neighborhood that are rented as opposed to owner-occupied is the landscaping. It’s usually just the half-dead indian hawthornes and dwarf yaupons that the builder installed. Those bushes, I’m convinced, will withstand a nuclear holocaust … they’re the cockroaches of landscaping. But they are serviceable, drought-tolerant, evergreen plants that are mostly bug-resistant.

Now that I’ve lived here for three or four years, I’ve started to add stuff. At first it was just a couple of Philippine Violets that a girlfriend’s mother gave me. Two out of three seedlings survived to bloom last year, which I was quite proud of!

Barleria Cristata in Bloom

This year, I got a bunch of (already sprouted) Narcissus and Gladiola bulbs free from someone who was digging out a flower bed in order to turn it into a vegetable garden. (And if that ain’t a sign of the times, I dunno what is.) I’m hoping that they’ll survive the transplant. If nothing survives, I’ll be sad, but there’s no financial loss — they were free anyway.

Now that spring sproinged here, the Oleander and Crepe Myrtles have started to send out new growth. Under cover of darkness (not really), I trimmed a few suckers that were showing signs of growth off of the plants maintained by the HOA. I felt kind of bad doing it, but it’s not really stealing — they’d get trimmed in a few weeks anyway, and a part of my rent goes to pay for someone to trim them. But a little bit of root hormone and a spare pot of dirt (which I have *plenty* of!) and I should have a few bushes for my own house in a year or two.

Definitely don’t forget to talk to your family. My never-throw-anything-out WWII-era grandpa had a bunch of Hibiscus seeds stored up in an old tupperware container. After testing to see if they were viable at all by planting and nursing some in containers, I planted the seeds on the shady side of the house and hopefully they’ll sprout in a few weeks and grow to hide the gas meter from the street.

There’s resources all over if you take the time to look at them. A master gardener’s club is a good place to start if you’ve got absolutely nowhere else in town to look. Garage sales and moving sales are also good. One of my friends just moved halfway across the country and left a bunch of pots and a large aloe plant for me. And look for community resources like Craigslist or a local forum where people talk. You might make some new friends and get more involved in the community as a result — two things that always bring great returns for the time you invest.