Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Sun_Addict

Lovely garden and so refreshing to to see a natural garden rather than regimented 😍

Tescodealqueen

Your garden is beautiful Foxgloves xxx lots of gorgeous greenery and gorgeous flowers xx

Baileys_Babe

Your garden is lovely @foxgloves thanks for sharing.

Narola1976

Gorgeous garden, thanks for sharing. 

marionmgcars

beautiful garden displays,  so satisfying knowing there was not hundreds of pounds spent.  Well done . 

scandimore

Your borders are beautiful @foxgloves

foxgloves

Thanks for all your lovely comments about my flowery garden - I wish I could show you the whole garden, but it is long & narrow and I just can't find an angle which gives a decent overall picture of the whole thing. Never mind - the main thing I was trying to convey was that once you get started, it is possible to have nice full flowery borders without spending silly pounds at the garden centre. It says a lot about my past substantial garden centre spending that I have so few of those plants left! Most of them were annuals & basket/container plants so only lasted a season, others were mail order stuff that didn't get very well-established or I bought la-di-dah fancypants varieties of things which I later found out were described as 'short lived'. I once read somewhere that if your budget was sufficient to buy 9 plants, rather than buy 9 different ones, it's be better design-wise to buy 3 each of 3 varieties. I have to say that I am my mother's daughter in that I now peer right down into each pot to assess the potential for division & if there are two or even three viable crowns down there, that'll be the one I choose. The same article said that to avoid the 'one here, one there' look, gardeners should aim for 3 or 4 'anchor' plants which are repeated right throughout the garden for consistency & a coherent look. Mine are alchemilla mollis, centaurea (the bright blue one), foxgloves & numerous hardy geranium varieties which are very easy to split for re-planting or swaps. For summer bedding, I usually stick to just a few varieties for the same reason.....cosmos, echium 'blue bedder', calendula & rudbeckia & grow from seed. I still have quite a few packets of Mum's very out of date seeds left, I shall have to get used to spending a bit more money when they've been used up, shan't I? I do like a very natural look, I don't get too worried about wild flowers popping up, but control the nuisance ones like groundsel, bindweed, hawkweed, etc. I'm too hippyfied for a regimented design. 
F x

foxgloves

So we've done flowers, now onto the tedium of mid-month budget check-in, which I have done this morning. All looking ok - I am £24 adrift. I can't find any obvious error & have double-checked the arithmetic, so I am assuming it is something I missed originally from the twilight period between pay-day & the end of the month. Also sorted out this month's credit card bill. We only use our credit cards for collecting points for loyalty vouchers & they are paid in full every month. However, my current one included budgeted spending from our main current account, a couple of items from savings pots which required a transfer of funds plus some from the Home Improvement Budget. So I did just need to sit quietly by myself for a bit with my statement & a sheet of paper for roughing out a diagram of what exactly was to be paid from where. All done now though & it looks as though card provider has cashed our £15 of points so there should be some vouchers on the way soon. I am saving them to boost our Christmas presents pot. No PA surveys for me so far today, but I noticed that my earnings total is now over £64, so I am feeling motivated to leave it in place to see if I can boost it up to £100 by Christmas. It might be a stretch, but it would be lovely to add that to my January 'Spends' in time for the sales. 
Well, the washing machine has pinged, so it's time to go & peg out the last of the laundry. Warm & blowy today so should dry very quickly. I need to check the pizza dough too, so must hie me away!
Hope everyone's getting off to a decent start to the week.
F x

QueenJess

The garden looks lovely   Isn't this the way everyone used to garden back in the day?  I thought the whole cottage garden thing came about as a result of annuals seeding themselves, swapping seeds with neighbours etc.  No one had any money to buy plants, you needed your garden for herbs/veg etc and of course you wouldn't have bought anything non-native anyway.

Sun_Addict

Most of the plants in my garden were free, I think they’re known as weeds 🤣