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Five easy, money saving DIY ideas for the novice: enhance your garden’s beauty and usefulness!

As the winter months draw to a close, gardening enthusiasts often feel the itch to get out into the garden and get everything in shape, so that planting can begin in earnest, bringing the first flowers of summer to bloom at the earliest possible moment. However, experienced gardeners know that you can’t jump the gun on certain tasks, such as tilling. If the ground is still too wet, you’ll only end up compacting the soil, doing your plants no good at all. Nonetheless, you want to get out in the garden on those sunny, mild days and get the smell of the earth in your nostrils and enjoy the beauty of nature.

There are many DIY garden projects that can satisfy your gardening urges, improve the appearance of your garden and save you a lot of money. Here we have five easy DIY ideas that fill the bill. Don’t fret if you’ve never done a DIY garden project in your life. Gardeners are hands-on people anyway and these DIY ideas are all well within the abilities of a beginner.

1. Build a trellis

No matter how small or large your garden may be, there’s always room for a trellis. All that’s needed in terms of space is a six inch margin from a wall. Create a lovely display of morning glories, thunbergia or climbing nasturtiums. These fast-growing vines will cover your trellis in no time. This DIY idea also makes a great space saver in the vegetable garden, hosting some climbing beans or peas. In terms of materials, what you need is a number of redwood 1 x 2, lightweight boards, a heavy-duty staple gun and a bit of cement to anchor your trellis feet.

2. Construct a planter box or two

Planter boxes are easy to make and are great for flowers on decks, entryways or to hold small herb gardens. What do you need for this DIY project? Four redwood or other rot-resistant boards, two inches thick and of a length sufficient for your need, 8 metal L-braces, 16 screws and fine screening for the bottom.

3.Make a garden hobby table

You can build and house this hobby table  in the garage, to get those early seeds going. This project also saves you money over buying starts in 4-6 inch pots later on in the season. A sheet of one inch rough plywood, screws, four posts for the legs and four cross pieces to brace the legs, makes a strong and economical solution to getting your garden ‘furnished’ as early as possible.

4. Build a potting bench

this is one of the most popular of our DIY ideas, simply because every gardener who doesn’t have one, wants one! Here again, when you check the prices of ready made potting benches, you’ll find your DIY potting bench is one of the biggest money savers. You can customize your   bench to suit your potting tasks perfectly. Build a shelf up top to hold fertilizers, rooting hormones, plant misters, or whatever nursery products you customarily use. Create a space for reference books. Make your bench exactly the right height for you! Allocate space for bags of potting soil and watering cans. Hang hooks to hold tools you like to have handy. The materials you’ll need depend on your particular design, but they’re all simple and inexpensive.

5.  Build a cold frame

A cold frame can be very usefulto get some salad greens going early. Much like constructing a planter box, the only additional material you’ll need for this DIY idea is an old window frame you may have already lying around, to cover the box.

All of these DIY ideas for the garden are especially easy, because you needn’t be fussy in your construction, as you might with a piece of furniture for your home. Edges are rough. A little ding or staple which is a tad off won’t matter.

You’ll also find that DIY stores and websites have all the information, tips and techniques to see you through to successful and lovely additions to your garden.

Tags: DIY, Home, ideas, Improvement

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 11:45 am and is filed under DIY ideas for Home Improvement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.