If you can tear yourself away from your sun lounger, here are two wee garden projects that might inspire you. (On the other hand, you might just decide to stay right where you are, making the most of this amazing summer!)
I have a horrible bit of wall under my kitchen window and have been wondering how I could cheer it up when I saw the lovely ‘pallet garden’ at the Tayport Community Garden and thought it might be the answer. There was a spare pallet at the garden so I carried it round and decided to use up some old red paint I found lurking in the garden shed. This is my favourite kind of painting activity where I don’t have to be too careful with the paintbrush, and because the weather was so warm, I could splash around in the garden without doing too much damage. I ran out of red paint but found another tin of grey and decided to go for it – the more colourful the better, I thought!
I hammered in some pieces of wood to make the ‘shelves’ and filled them with gravel and compost. I’m not sure what plants will grow in these shallow containers but I put in a variety of flowers and herbs which I think won’t grow too tall. I had some spare spider plants from the house so they went in as well. I’m really pleased with the results.
My second project, I also credit to the team at the community garden – a bug hotel. I used an excellent book: Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other beneficial insects, by Jan Miller-Klein which I borrowed from the PLANT library. (It’s now back on the shelf if anyone else wants to borrow it!). The book has lots of good advice about the type of material that is useful for insects and I’ve just started to fill it up. I don’t have a big garden so I broke up an old pallet to make the different floors of the bug house. We’ll see who uses it in the coming months!
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