Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Hi WTMA, What a lovely idea. It's amazing what people find they can fit into a small space. Even just a balcony will allow for growing tomatoes, herbs & salads.
Now, I have to say that I know nothing about vertical gardening. I think it can look amazing - I've seen it on the TV Chelsea Flower Show coverage - but I think what will look good will probably depend on how you intend to 'go vertical'. i.e I'm thinking that you could maybe use different plants if you were intending to fit pots or troughs to a vertical wall than if you were going to use pallets. So, given that I know absolutely nothing about this style of gardening, I have had a think about what I would choose if I was thinking of attaching some form of planters to our courtyard wall. I think I would choose just 3 to 5 different plants, as repeating plants tend to make any planting scheme look more generous. I would probably choose a nice ivy-leaved geranium.....perhaps something like 'Tom-cat', as that's got a really nice green leaf plus dark scarlet flowers & a semi-trailing habit. Then I think I'd go for a foliage plant....maybe 'Dichondra' (I may not have spelled this correctly), the variety called something like 'Silver falls', as this cascades nicely & would set off the red 'Tom-cat' geranium. Depending on the type of planter used, I might be tempted to try some 'alchemilla mollis' because the leaf shape is attractive, especially when covered with raindrops/dew & the froth of lime-green flowers is attractive. Then I'd probably add a white flower.....perhaps a trailing lobelia. None of these are particularly perfumed. I like perfumed plants myself, as they attract bees & I like to see plenty of life in the garden. It might be worth looking up which plants are recommended for the vertical hanging pouch planters, as those should work for projects similar to what you describe.
Overall, I think your best bet is probably to visit a good garden centre or nursery & look at some of the stuff on display, to see what you like. It's also worth thinking about whether you intend using annuals, & so planting up your wall every year, or whether you want to try & include at least some plants perennial plants, which will grow back, or some miniature spring bulbs.
Wish I could be more helpful. Because we have quite a big garden, I haven't had to 'go vertical' & so the only climbers I have are a clematis over the archway into the veggie garden, & a hydrangea petiolaris in a big container next to a wall on the courtyard which gets virtually no sun.
What a lovely project though. Hope you enjoy working it all out.
F

Hi debt-busters,
Just popping in before disappearing down to the greenhouse with a mug of coffee to tie in some veg plants & pot up some lavender babies. Hope everyone who reads my ramblings is doing ok? We're all in this money saving business together aren't we, that's for sure......& I mean that genuinely, not like when we hear it from a Tory minister with four expensive houses & a big investment portfolio!

This morning, I made a small discovery.......completely insignificant in the scheme of things, but it brought me satisfaction. You see, I bought a lipstick last year, which I liked in the shop - almost everything looks good when tested on the back of a sun-tanned hand - but when I started using it, it wasn't a good colour for me. I like a fairly strong look.....plenty of eye-liner, mascara, etc, but this lippy was just too vampy & made me look washed out, like I'd been on a bender the night before. But I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. I spent the money on it. It's already another piece of non-recyclable plastic I'd be adding to landfill, & it just seemed worse if I didn't even use the product. So this morning, I experimented with it & found that applying just a tiny bit & spreading it around looks fine. In fact, used that way, it isn't far off a colour I do like to wear, so daft as it sounds, this made me feel as though I'd had something new!
I've always worn make-up, since I was about 12. Love it. I don't generally even peg out the laundry without my mascara on - although I guess that's habit now, more than vanity, as I'm more bothered about the condition of my skin these days (being a woman of a tricky age, lol) than what I paint it with, but unless I'm poorly, I do wear at least some make-up every day.
Of course, back when I was spendy (you can tell where this is going, can't you?), I spent a lot of money on make-up. Not drawers full, like you occasionally see on debt programmes, but plenty of it, nevertheless. I rarely finished any product. I loved perusing & testing new products & colours and felt sure each item bought would turn out to be the best colour ever, a fab new look, etc, etc. I didn't often buy top-end brands......I did have a couple of Dior lipsticks, following a time I was given one as a gift, but even as Mrs Spendy, I thought they were too expensive to buy as a regular purchase. I used Clinique skincare for a long time, so would often buy make-up from their range, but the main spendiness was simply buying too much of everything, as even the cheaper mainstream brands add up. As with most over-buying, the result was having a lot stuff, none of which was ever quite right. And as pretty much all of it, except glass foundation bottles, is in plastic casing, it was a lot of unrecyclable cr*p going off to landfill too. I can remember that I'd come home with a new brand of mascara & I'd have to try it immediately, before finishing the old ones, so I'd end up with everything opened at once. What a waste!
Nowadays, I use affordable high street ranges & buy much more carefully. Make-up is bought from my monthly personal spends budget, so if I blow a few quid on a lippy that turns out to look hideous when I get it home, that's a few quid I won't have to spend on something else. Surprising just how much having a budget for personal spending makes me choose so much more carefully. My make-up bag now contains 1 foundation, 1 mascara, 1 eyeliner & a couple of lippies.......one for when I want a more natural look & one for glamming up. I have 2 eye shadow colours - one neutral & one for smoky eyes if it's a leather jacket & DMs day. And at the moment, I have this lippy I hated, but have now found I can wear as a lip-stain without looking too vampyric! It's a far cry from the old days when I stood in rapture with a pile of testers buying whole colour co-ordinated looks at once, which I then rarely wore. I can't really guess at how much money I have saved on this kind of product wince the LBM, but I reckon it's a significant wodge, & a lot less clutter too.
And I haven't cracked any mirrors yet, so must be doing something right.
F x

Ooooh, couldn't be without mascara, Kantankrus Mare - I reckon I'd have to have it even if I was the sole person marooned on a desert island!
Great bit of batch cooking by the way!
You & I are a similar 'vintage'.....I'm slightly older. I think the drive to be mortgage-free increases with age & in our case, post-LBM! I think we have around 9 years on ours, but by the end of this year, we'll be below £40k & I think we'll really see it dropping then. We need a fair bit of work doing on the house & mr f mentioned this week that one possibility would be borrowing a bit more on the mortgage. We reckon we have somewhere around £105k positive equity, but we couldn't bring ourselves to pursue it, having got the mortgage down to a level where we can actually see that it should be paid in 9 years or so. Think we will have to clear the remains of our small car loan (our only debt apart from mortgage) & save up for remedial works on house instead. At least we are not spendy any more & know we are capable of saving.
F