Small Budget Gardeners can find free manure at racetracks, dairies and stables. To find out where horses live ask mounted police or carriage ride drivers. They must all contend with the problems of manure accumulation, which can cause nitrate rich runoff, or rain can filter down to the water table. When you come and take manure for your garden, you are actually helping the environment as well as creating a top notch organic garden for yourself for FREE.

Every old chair is a planter waiting to happen!  Plant the seat with an abundance of flowers for a charming addition to that focal point.  Just use a piece of metal hardware cloth, nail it to the underside of the seat, line with moss and fill with potting soil.  Then plant to your heart’s content with annual flowers, miniature succulents, herbs or even grass.  This is a great idea for renters on a tight budget because your planted chair moves with you.  As the seasons change, move your chair with the sunshine because it’s light weight and stands alone.  Combine with a group of salvaged pots made of tin cans, paint cans or galvanized buckets for a charming “green” composition.

I found this nearly FREE idea in the ancient place of the flowers, Xochemilco, off the beaten path in Mexico. Holding up the canvas awning were wood posts decked out with ordinary tin cans. They use canned milk there with remnants of some labels still visible. Some cans were nailed on. Others had little wire bucket handles attached to the top that would hang on the nails so they could be taken down or changed. Note how the cans are placed one directly above another. That way when watered from the top the, drainage waters the can beneath it. Planted with donkey-tail succulents, what little water it needs is recycled for maximum value.