This article is mostly aimed as saving some money in the long term from what you buy from "Garden Centres". Hopefully I can give you some inspiration at making gardening more economically viable.
Today I went for a long walk to my local "Garden Center", mostly to purchase a grass like shrub, but also to enjoy looking around there. It's just a really nice place to visit if you enjoy Nature. While I was there I somehow started an interesting conversation with one of the staff about how they price their plants in general.
He told me that they use a specific calculation "formula" according to the length of time that they have been caring for the plant. This includes watering, spraying with insecticide and how much space the plant takes up. As space comes at a cost, this is worked out very carefully with monetary inflation also taken into account.
So to summarize: This is mainly why huge shrubs and Trees are so expensive to buy there. However, there are ways that you can make some of your purchases more economically viable. Some shrubs are very easy to split into two or even three separate plants, a year after they have been planted. Grasses are a very good example of that technique to obtain a better value over time.
In fact I used this gardening technique this Summer to increase my Spirea shrubs, now I have several of them in different places, and even giving a couple of them to my daughter. She was most grateful 😀
Clematis plants are normally climbers, but the unusual variety (below) is more shrub like in appearance, and does not climb. Another great example of splitting one plant into two. This method worked perfectly well for me, as you can see in the before and after split (photos).
- After Split...
- Before Split...
All photos (above) taken my me with an Apple iPhone
Some Photo editing done in my Photoshop Software.
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