Little by little, since moving into this new house a year ago (guess it’s not so new anymore, now that it’s been a year), we’ve been putting our personal stamp on the place as best we can–given time and budget constraints. We’ve managed to get the living room painted, and the mudroom cleaned out (it still bore the remnants of our move). As the weather got nicer, we began fixing up the outside, including taking a weedy patch of God-only-knows-what back by the pool, and reseeding it as a little grassy knoll. We purchased a porch swing, gazebo for the backyard and outdoor furniture. (We had Lowe’s gift cards leftover from Christmas.) And I’ve started to tackle the landscaping, which was sorely neglected by the previous owners. I swear I’ve never seen so much out-of-control ivy outside of a university quad!

One of the joys in my old house was growing a garden from scratch and then, as the eight years went by, splitting and transplanting bushes from here to there. There was the tiny lilac bush that I nurtured from a seedling, and eventually got big enough to split. By the time we sold the house, that little seedling had produced two four-foot lilac bushes. There were the “hardy” mums that never seemed to understand that they were a fall flower, and would burst into color during July. Season after season, they grew bigger and more vibrant. I must have split and transplanted them three or four times. Our butterfly bush grew to gargantuan proportions, the corkscrew willow reached the roof (I was taller than it when we first planted it), and the spirea and burning bushes all added to a robust garden.

Sadly, when we moved, we were not given the chance to take any of our landscaping–we were told the new owners weren’t interested in letting us. So you can imagine my heartbreak when I drove back through the old neighborhood a few weeks after we moved (my daughter had a playdate with a friend living there) and saw that the new owners had ripped everything out. No more mums, spirea, burning bush or butterfly bushes. In it’s place–grass. All grass.

Back at this new house, we finally got some time this spring to begin sprucing up the gardens by cutting back the ivy and trimming the azaleas, which blossoms have come and gone. Last week I decided to transplant four azaleas from the backyard to the front yard–the front had no color, save for one rhododendron–and now, four transplanted azaleas later, my front path will be framed with pink and white azalea bushes come next spring. Because our house sits on a hill and doesn’t have a lawn, we’ve got ground cover instead. Specifically, we’ve got creeping myrtle or vinca, which produces a pretty purple flower in the spring. Unfortunately, the previous owners had planted this ground cover spottily, leaving it looking like a man who’d had a bad hair transplant job. This past weekend I started transplanting myrtle from the back, where it’s growing like a weed, to the front so I could fill in the bare spots.

We still have a long way to go with filling out the landscaping, specifically in the front of the house, where the cement foundation is exposed and ugly. I’d like to get some of the same shrubbery that I used to have in my old house but, in a fit of frugalness, I don’t want to have to pay for it. Well, a friend of mine happened to have told me recently how she put a call out on Freecycle for hosta. She wanted more for her garden and, like me, didn’t want to have to pay for something she might be able to get for free. Her Freecycle “wanted” ad worked, because she ended up with more hosta than she knew what to do with.

I took a page from her frugal book, and put my own “wanted” ad on Freecycle, along with Craigslist, and people have been responding quickly and generously. I’ve already picked up a small lilac bush, some daylilies and two bags of compost soil (didn’t ask for it but she wanted to get rid of it and it was free, so I took it). I’m heading down to someone’s else’s home later this week to look at a few burning bushes, holly bushes and what sounds like Scottish broom. One of these folks is having a fence put in and needs the plants taken away, or the fence guys were just going to throw them out.

The only catch in my getting this shrubbery for free? In some instances I’ve got to go dig the plants out myself. No problem. I’ve got a good work ethic and a strong desire to avoid spending money when I don’t have to. Sure, I’ll spend a little on gas getting to these places, but not nearly as much as I would have paid for mature bushes at a local nursery.

Have you ever thought of getting free shrubbery, plants or bushes from a place like Freecycle or Craigslist? If not landscaping greenery, what other kinds of “I can’t believe you got that for free” items have you secured by putting a “wanted” ad on one of these websites? I’d love to hear how you cleverly saved money and helped avoid something getting tossed in the trash.