Gardening with Recycled Materials: Eco-Friendly Creativity

Many of us know we could be doing better when it comes to taking care of the planet. Sure, you might put your plastic, cardboard, and glass in the recycling bin, but what else are you doing to look after Mother Earth?

It can all start with your garden. It’s time to flex your creative muscles and start gardening with recycled materials. We’ve got a few excellent ideas to help you get started!

Make Your Own Compost

Any gardener can walk into their local gardening retailer and purchase ready-to-use compost. However, did you know you can make your own using products you’ve already used in your own home? In the long run, making your own compost can also save you money.

Composting involves turning your kitchen waste into plant fertiliser. It’s easy to do and is also a great way to prevent unnecessary food waste from ending up in landfills across Aotearoa. What’s more, you might be surprised by how much of the goodies you throw in your rubbish bin could become nutrient-rich food for your plants.

  • Fruit and vegetables

  • Eggshells

  • Coffee grounds

  • Teabags

  • Grass clippings

  • Leaves

  • Paper, newspaper, and cardboard

  • Hair and pet fur

  • Egg cartons

  • Non-meat-eating pet droppings 

Simply purchase a compost bin or container and mix a combination of 40% green matter and 60% brown matter. With time and trial and error, you can have a considerable amount of composted matter to help your plants thrive.

Water With Rainwater

Most plants need water year-round. Yet, we can’t always rely on the rain to provide what they need. Our garden hoses must come to the rescue. However, during droughts and times of water restrictions, keeping our plants healthy can be much more challenging.

Consider investing in a rainwater system to save our treated water for drinking, showering, and other household necessities. Rainwater harvesting provides gardeners with many standout benefits, such as:

  • Improving your property’s drought resilience

  • Enjoying more self-sufficiency

  • Having smaller water bills

  • Access to gardens far away from your home’s water source 

Get Creative With Seedlings

Many gardeners start their seedlings in plastic containers before eventually planting them in their gardens once established. While this approach is fine if you reuse the same plastic containers each year, it can be wasteful if you buy new ones.

Why not look at other seedling containers you can use to give your plants a great start to life? Paper cups, empty egg cartons, and even egg shells can all make excellent seedling containers. You might even like to save up your used toilet paper rolls, fold the ends in, and use these as biodegradable pots. Getting creative with seedlings might help you save money and the environment simultaneously.

Make Your Own Outdoor Furniture

New Zealand weather conditions can be fierce. If it’s not the wind, rain, and snow that see your outdoor furniture succumb to the elements, then it’s surely the intense UV rays during the summer months.

Despite our best efforts to buy high-quality outdoor furniture to spruce up our yards, it doesn’t always last as long as we would like when stored outdoors. In that case, consider making your own outdoor furniture using wooden pallets. You can save money on something you’ll likely need to replace in the future anyway.

You can do many things with wood pallets when you think outside the box. Chairs, benches, and tables are just a few of the many options.

Create Planter Pots

Planter pots can be expensive to buy. Yet, we purchase them because we don’t have any other options. Well, maybe we do. Did you know you can use many items as planter pots, even if that isn’t their intended purpose?

Old kitchen colanders, tyres, old work boots, and even sinks and bathtubs can all be unique planter pot ideas. As long as they have a form of drainage, you can use any vessel around your home as a house for your prized potted plants.

Bottle Edging

There are very few options when it comes to garden edging. Mostly, you can choose from wood or vinyl edging available at your local garden store or online. But what if you could use something that would otherwise end up in your recycling bin or a landfill?

Glass bottles can be more suitable for garden edging than you think. Gather your collection of wine bottles, turn them upside down, and bury them in your soil or gravel. When secured in the ground shoulder to shoulder, they can function as well as any other edging material.

Garden With the Environment In Mind

Gardening is already an excellent way to take care of the environment, but we could do so much more. Try some of these eco-friendly recycled material ideas above, and you might be surprised by how much money you save while taking care of Mother Earth at the same time.

Karan Kikani