Recycling

The garden is the #1 best place to recycle.  In some cases, the recyclables improve over time with assistance from nature.  Gardeners recycle leaves and twigs into their compost piles and their kitchen scraps into their worm bins.  Then they wait a few months to harvest perfect additives for their soil.

But there are many other ways to recycle in the garden. 

Several years ago, I repurposed our blue recycling bin to make an outdoor worm bin.  Two years and thousands of worms later, I found a larger brown worm bin and re-recycled the blue worm bin into a pot for the native spiderwort, Tradescantia 'Purple Profusion.' The blue bin is a beautiful complement to the gold foliage of the spiderwort.

This year's hot and rainy summer produced a blight that killed the spiderwort, so I re-re-recycled the recycling bin to a pot for coleus, cutting that were themselves recycled from a plant that grew too large in my garden at the library.

Coleus laughs at Southern blight.  This coleus is only a few weeks old, but is growing vigorously.  This is a secret, but coleus is my new favorite plant due to its healthy constitution.  I feel guilty as coleus is not native.

A pile of stones were left behind when the landscaper made my bird fountain. I lay them out one by one until they formed a long low wall beside the driveway.

Every year I add organic matter to the soil behind the wall.  It supports a rich green privacy barrier between the garden and the neighbors fence.

Near the end of the driveway is Lantana 'Miss Huff' who returns every year.

This year I used a thin strip of deer fencing to make a trellis to the basketball goal for morning glories. 

The thick stems of the Jackson vine, Smilax smallii, are making their way to the basketball goal also.  Maybe someday a hawk will nest there.


My herb garden is a recycled a wooden crate from Whole Foods.

This old Smith Corona Super Speed still has a ribbon. The keys stick and the garden is its destiny, but I don't have the proper place yet.  Suggestions would be appreciated.