Suddenly Frugal Blog

When my husband, Bill, and I bought our first house, we couldn’t afford to hire a landscaper or a gardener. At the same time we weren’t going to live without some kind of garden. To make ends meet and to make ourselves happy, we decided to design and plant our garden ourselves.

That said, we weren’t going to be stupid about how we planted our garden. We really didn’t want to see our hard-earned dollars wither up and die in the front yard.

The first thing Bill and I did was consult with the Penn State Co-op Extension’s website to find out which plants fared the best in our Pennsylvania “climate.” Next, because we noticed that there were as many deer on our street as there were kids on bikes, we knew we wanted to plant greenery that wouldn’t become deer food. My mother, who is a master gardener, suggested we look on Cornell University’s Co-op Extension website to find which plants deer don’t like so we could choose those. Finally, once we were armed with this information, we visited our local gardening center and started asking questions about various flowers, bushes and trees. In addition to looking for greenery that fit our climate and anti-deer criteria, we wanted to see which colors looked good together. In about a day we had our garden planned out and we started digging.

Though we did our homework, we did make some wrong moves, such as the transplanted hosta from my mother’s yard–hey, it was free. It turned out that in planting the hosta, we’d set up a deer salad bar buffet. We pulled it all out and tossed it in the woods. I don’t care if the deer eat my hosta, just don’t do it near my front door. And even though Cornell listed phlox as being a deer-proof plant, it turns out that Upstate New York deer may not like it, but Southeastern Pennsylvania deer gobble it up as do deer in other parts of the state, as this DIY Network article shows. So into the woods the phlox went. However, the purple butterfly bush, yellow coreopsis and the blue-flowered myrtle ground cover all flourished.

Maybe it’s because Bill and I are do-it-yourself types that we enjoyed the process of creating our DIY garden–and look forward to doing it again in our new house. Our plan is to plant via xeriscaping, which is defined as choosing plants and landscaping greenery that does not require additional irrigation. Translated into English? A truly “green” garden that doesn’t need to be watered. Do I know anything about xeriscaping? Hell, no, but I’m looking forward to learning all I can about it and then putting my new-found knowledge to use come spring.

Maybe it’s because I enjoy learning new skills that when I read in the current issue of Newsweek about this new crop of gardening coaches, I almost spit my coffee across the kitchen table. (Full disclosure, not about coffee spitting but about Newsweek: I am currently working on a special section for the magazine.)

I know that the coaching industry (and I don’t mean Little League) for grown-ups has taken off in this new millennium, and you know what? I just don’t get it. Why do you need to pay someone to tell you something that you could find out for yourself? Is it because therapists are too expensive so people rely on life coaches instead?

I know plenty of people whom I like and respect who have chosen to become a life coach–one specializes in dating, another in writing–and more power to them for making a living at what they do. But I doubt you would ever catch me spending $25 an hour to bring in a gardening coach. Sure, I’m lucky that I can call my mom for advice, but what’s stopping someone else from just doing her homework to figure out how to get a handle on her garden? With a little big of digging (no pun intended since we’re talking about gardening), you might just find that you enjoy developing your own green thumb like Bill and I did.