17 Smart Ways to Save Money in Your Garden This Season

With prices on the rise, finding ways to save money is more important than ever. Channel your inner frugality with these cost-saving measures for your garden.

1. Go to Seed

Seeds are the ultimate cost-saver: A single packet can give you loads of annuals for under $5, while a nursery flat of plants may cost four times as much. If you're starting seeds indoors to give them a head start, you can do it on the cheap with a variety of upcycled household items.

2. Make Free Plants

Some plants, like geraniums, are easily propagated through cuttings. Similarly, dividing plants like hostas, daylilies, and large ornamental grasses gives you more—albeit smaller—plants you can use elsewhere in the yard or trade with other gardeners.

3. Shop Stategically

Rather than buying plants and materials when they first become available in spring, wait for seasonal discounts. Annuals are often discounted in midsummer, perennials and woodies in late summer. Some of the big retailers even go half price on trees and shrubs in June. And those temporary garden centers you find in supermarket parking lots in spring can be a gold mine for thrifty gardeners when they close in early summer.

4. Buy Small

Perennials in 4-in. pots can be half the price of those in gallon-size pots. These smaller perennials may need a little more attention when it comes to watering their first year, but after that, they soon catch up to their bigger siblings. The same goes for vegetables—a multipack of tomato plants can cost the same amount as a single, larger specimen that’s only a few weeks older.

5. Share and Share Alike

Split the cost of multiple seed packets with a friend, allowing you to both grow a variety of plants. Trading plants can also be fun (and economical). Offer a plant you've already divided to a friend or neighbor and see if they don’t automatically try to return the favor with something from their yard.

6. Swap Tools with Neighbors

There’s no reason everyone in the neighborhood has to have their own tiller or chipper. They are costly, used infrequently, and take up valuable space. If a friend or neighbor has one, ask to borrow it, be sure to return it in good working order, then try to return the favor at some point by offering something in your gardening toolbox. Or team up with neighbors and split the cost of renting equipment, such as an aerator, so that a $150 rental fee quickly gets knocked below 50 bucks.

7. Find a New Purpose

Repurpose old items you find around the garage or on the curb on trash day. Pair old windows with concrete blocks to make a cold frame. Or line raised beds with old window screens to keep voles from grazing on the roots of plants. If you're really handy, you can even make a greenhouse out of reclaimed materials.

8. Count on Groundcovers

Hard-working groundcovers can save you money because they make the garden look lush, reducing the need to buy filler plants. (Bonus: Once they fill in, there’s less weeding to do.) Chartreuse creeping Jenny, chocolate ajuga and variegated lamium are bold groundcovers with enough firepower to star on their own.

9. Choose Self-Seeders

Self-seeding annuals are a frugal gardener’s best friend. You buy a pack of seeds once, then allow the plants to mature, flower, and go to seed. Next year you’ve got another batch—without buying more seed. Some of the easiest self-seeding flowers are bachelor’s buttons, calendula, spider flower, cosmos, larkspur and zinnia. Biennials like hollyhock and short-lived perennials like rose campion also fill the bill.

10. Make Your Own Compost

Making compost rather than buying it from the nursery is simple. One method is to fill a trench in the vegetable garden with leaves and kitchen scraps, backfilling with soil as you go along. Grow a row of crops next to this trench of compost-in-the-making. Next year, switch. Plant your crop in the amended soil and start a trench where the crop was previously grown.

11. Get a Deal on Mulch

Never pay full price for mulch—you can often buy it on sale or even get it free. Bagged mulch often goes on sale around summer holidays, and open bags may be discounted as much as 50 percent any time of year. Even better, many municipalities offer free stockpiles of wood chips for the taking.

12. Plant for Permanence

Perennials make financial sense simply because they come back year after year and don’t need to be purchased annually like, well, annuals. Instead of purchasing them at their peak, however, buy them on sale after they’ve finished blooming and start to look a little tired. As long as the foliage looks okay, you’ve got the makings for a star performer next year.

13. Buy Used Tools

Look for used tools at garage, estate sales, or thrift stores. You’ll sometimes find older tools with true quality and craftsmanship—at a fraction of the cost of new. Keep those tools clean, oiled, sharpened and most importantly under cover to ensure many years of use.

14. Pad Pots and Beds

Unless you’re growing a tree in a pot, you probably don’t need to fill a large container entirely with potting soil. Save some dough by filling the bottom third of the pot with inert materials such as blocks of polystyrene foam from product packaging or packing peanuts (secured in plastic bags). Similarly, if you have a tall raised bed, you can line it with something that costs nothing: logs, branches, sticks, leaves, rocks, or broken pavers. 

15. Follow Nature's Lead

Native plants are those found growing naturally in your region. They have evolved to grow in that climate and environment and are more self-sufficient than exotics. That means less fertilizing, less supplemental watering, less winter protection—and less cost to you.

16. Bulk Up

If you need a lot of soil, compost or mulch, buy the material in bulk from a garden center or local landscaping company. It not only saves you money, but also cuts down on plastic packaging.

17. Grow Edibles Strategically

Finally, grow what you like, when it comes to produce. There’s no point spending time and money growing something that will never make it to your table. Also, look at what offers the best value. Red bell peppers can cost up to $3 apiece at the supermarket, yet you could grow dozens of them for the cost of a seed packet. Similarly, herbs are pricey at the store, but can be grown cheaply; because they quickly replenish after harvesting, you can “cut and come again” throughout the season.