“The supreme reality of our time is…the vulnerability of our planet.” -John F Kennedy
Yard Waste day in our neighborhood can bring a lot of free raw materials for many projects. Earlier this spring we found a pile of logs along the road which we quickly piled in the trunk of the car. We live on a corner lot so we decided to make an organic flower bed at the corner of the property by the road. About half of the plants we used were also free – some from other yard waste and others from a retail furniture chain that uses them as props until they get too sickly to use, then they throw them away!
This project was done without measuring and without too much thinking. All you need is a hammer, some big nails and maybe a shovel. We took the smaller pieces and just hammered them together to form a box until we had our desired look which was “Grizzly Adams Simple.”
We used the larger logs as a border around the front area to enclose another section. We shoveled in some topsoil and then mixed in some home-made compost.
We used Sweet Potato Vines to fill in the spaces between the logs in the box and around the outside of the bed. We threw in a few packages of wildflower seeds, an Agave Plant and a couple Pencil Cactus from another pile of yard waste we found among a few other plants we bought.
There is not much maintenance to this flower bed except for keeping it watered and pulling out some weeds. Occasionally, we thin out the Sweet Potato vines as they responded too well to the compost and began taking over. If your problem is that the plants are growing too well, just be happy.
Whenever you can, reuse, repurpose and recycle!
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