Yorkshire folk like value for money and why not? Southerners can buy there plants from Chelsea flower show or get the latest fashionable plants from foreign breeders. The doughty Yorkshire gardener will consider his options and grow accordingly.
Best Money Saving Garden Ideas
- ‘The best time to take cuttings is when no one is looking.’
- Use what you have to increase you stock of plants.
- Divide primulas and herbaceous plants.
- Collect ripe seeds and sow them for next season.
- Take softwood or hardwood cuttings to get more shrubs and save plants through winter.
- Be careful buying and sowing seed. If you only get a few viable plants as a result you will be paying over the odds for you plant. Seed can be very expensive per plant grown.
- Beg, borrow or steal (or not that one) from other gardeners. They often have more plants than they need and generally will help a new gardener with a cutting or excess plants.
- Buy in bulk with a friend or neighbor. There are good deals at Horticultural clubs or for bulk purchases of spring bulbs from wholesalers.
- Think longer term and buy good long living plants the give a good all round show of flower, fruit and colour.
Retailers for Savings
- I favour buying from proper and often specialist nurseries. You want good quality plants or your money can be wasted. Dead or dying plants will not save you any money.
- Second choice for me is farmers markets and markets with a high turnover of fresh looking plants.
- Garden centers keep moving towards multi-product retailers and often sacrifice gardeners needs. Big pantechnicons from Holland only lead to big margins.
- Yorkshire traders, Wilco, B&M’s and supermarket multiples who pile it high and seem to sell cheap are seeking to catch the impulse buyer.
Plug Plants
Mail order plug plants can be good value if you need quantities 160’s of 105 plants for just over a tenner seems to be good value.
Choose from a good selection, for spring you could opt for Auriculas, numerous Pansies or Rosebud Primroses. Sowing your own is labour intensive and seed is getting more expensive.
Wallflowers are only supposed to last one year but if you can put up with them being a bit leggy they will flower again. If you want new plants get them planted in summer and pinch out the growing tip to get a bushy plant.