As I move into my third year of this enterprise, I am coming to learn new ways in which to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks with a minimum of funding. Admittedly, I envy the two-income families with money to expend upon an instantaneous landscape. But a good colleague once shared with me a Tibetan saying about how it is the path that matters. Focusing on each footstep makes me see the ground beneath my feet and appreciate it all the more. A lot of money and faster results would be great, but this is turning out to be a process-orientated enterprise, and so I offer my reflections on my own education so that it may help others with similar aspirations.
I. Materials – low cost goes a long way with 10 acres

fresh wood chips for garden top dressing and covering weedy areas
A. Wood chips – get to know the local road crews; they want to save time and money by dumping chips from roadside brush chipping operations as close to the work site as they can. I know one crew that keeps a notebook of signed permission forms from residents who want loads. I now possess a small mountain of chips resulting from this approach. Of course, there are drawbacks to consider:
Fresh chips can only be used for top dressing lest they draw too much nitrogen from the soil. Larger piles, if left alone for a few months, will generate sufficient heat to compost the center. My current pile is so large it generates its own heat, which it gives off in the form of fine fumaroles of steam that give it the appearance of a lopsided volcano.
Fresh chips can have fungi and disease, so you take your chances. Most of the material in my pile is from smaller roadside vegetation less likely to have root-rot or canker-carrying madrone chips. Heat within the pile will likely kill anything inside. Last year, the bottom of the pile was nicely mulched by the time that I reached it, and was happily growing a crop of little white mushrooms. Consider also if the local government sprays herbicide, although usually this will break down rather quickly.
Conifer chips are best, for they break down more slowly.
B. Gravel – in exchange for using my father’s driveway as a staging area, the local utility company gave us 5 yards of crushed gravel perfect for garden paths. Although grey and rather non-descript in appearance, it can be topped with colored materials later.
C. Logs – many people want to give away large, awkward pieces of wood. Last summer, I worked with a Tacoma homeowner to wrestle several hundred pounds of beautiful cedar logs into my truck that he’d left out by the sidewalk for the taking.

half of a utility wire spool about 5' diameter will make a patio table with a hand-cast cement pedestal
D. Crates, pallets, and the sides of large wire spools are all fine building materials for compost piles, chicken pens, and picnic tables. All of these items have come from local hardware and construction material stores that typically allow them to be taken for free. Pallet wood is particularly good if carefully chosen: I have encountered chunks of oak used in their construction. The electrical spool side had been left along a county access road adjacent to a closed-down utility yard. The hole in the center will make a great place for a shade umbrella once I refinish it.
E. Brick – mine came from the demolition of a church in my mother’s neighborhood that piled it up for local residents to take. It has provided material for at least one small patio.
F. Pole timber – all over the place in my case. I do amateur logging with a bucksaw and have all that I need for deer fencing and plant bed lining.
G. Glass – I buy my own in the form of attractive wine and sparkling water bottles, but I have been told that vintners are always looking to give away empties. When broken and thrown into a cement mixer with a little grit, you can have your own ground glass for pots and walkways.
H. Cardboard – I became a cardboard box scrounge queen before I moved here by diligently patrolling local eateries, liquor stores, appliance and furniture stores for boxes of all shapes and sizes for packing. Now, free cardboard works well as a weed deterrent when topped with bark. Newspaper serves the same purpose and is considerably more flexible than cardboard for small areas.

ground cover growing in clay drain pipes, both courtesy of two very generous gardeners
I. Manure – There is always some to be had at local horse farms, composted and otherwise. Goat manure has proved to be quite useful as fertilizer, being pre-packaged into convenient, slow-release pellets, but the cost of the goats outweighed this advantage. I’d rather befriend a goat farmer.
J. Plants – Join any gardening group, or volunteer at a local garden and you will have bequeathed upon you large numbers of free plants. I’ve obtained all manner of trees, groundcovers and shrubs in this manner. Taking a horticulture class in a botanical garden one summer netted me not only plants and bulbs, but free bamboo poles too. Plant salvage events are also great ways to get native plants.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have also been known to pick up dropped lumber on roadsides, take curbside freebies (signed of course), and got two free 5’ x 4’ pine shelf sets from a giveaway at a local big box hardware store. I’ve dived into dumpsters for large pieces of free carpet and flooring, and gathered ground granite from roadside slides.
Just as when I did biological surveys, I maintain a search image for my prey. As I drive, I operate under a subconscious directive to look out for freebies, and I do frequent u-turns to check them out, to the consternation of those who ride with me. Having a truck with a camper shell is helpful for this kind of endeavor, as I can usually pull over and pack in just about anything that I encounter.
When my truck proves too small, I drive home and bring my father’s open-bed Chevy. He doesn’t mind, having himself conferred the propensity for gathering on me either genetically or by example. This property harbors the wealth of a lifetime of collecting: scrap lumber, aluminum sheeting, roofing felt by the roll, pipe both plastic and steel, and a wealth of cans, buckets, cement forms and tire hubs for use as planters. When I get an idea, I need only look through this extensive collection of what some might call ‘junk’ to glean materials for my next project.
II. Methods
Here are a few lessons that I’ve learned during my time here, some critical, some merely helpful:
A. Always wear goggles when pruning, piling brush, hammering, stapling, or trimming and cutting anything with any sort of tool. Two scratched corneas will attest to days of pain and hours of time spent in urgent care for want of goggles.
B. Use a back support as a reminder not to lift two heavy pallets at once. It would have saved me a week spent unable to bend over, and a future of lower back pain.
C. Weed as you go about other projects. I love to weed in short batches of about 15 minutes before my attention span gives out and I migrate to other things. I also grab weeds as I’m walking by a bed. It saves considerable time and tedium, for I’ve no patience for a full day of such tasks.
D. Pull garden weeds in winter (a Pacific Northwest tip). I’m attempting a no-till approach this spring, which may be more successful than I’d first thought because even tough clumps of grass come up easily by hand when the ground is saturated.
E. Blackberries can be defeated by gentle means. Time and patience and a small pair of hand clippers are all that you need. Seriously. I’ve killed entire patches that way. I trim them as I walk down the driveway (with my goggles) to get the newspaper; I spend time on hot summer days in the cool shade trimming them; I go out in winter when it’s frozen and the vegetation is dry and cut away. It’s a very peaceful activity and highly satisfying when completed. Start with the outer vines and cut them back in short pieces until you can move into the thicket and get the base. A few well-time returns in fall and early spring will deplete the plants’ resources and eventually eliminate them.
F. Native vegetation can be shaped to look cultivated. This is an option for those of us faced with large thickets of native vegetation that are beautiful yet untamed. I have found that clipping away the lower branches of huckleberries, or cutting back snarled limbs of old-growth salmon berry can produce a more artistic look to the wilderness, and bring the edge of a woodland into continuity with planted beds. I also intend to create spaces in the woods for the occasional colorful non-native, such as hydrangea or dogwood ‘Mid-Winter Fire’.

A native evergreen huckleberry pruned to show structure.
G. Observe a place for at least four seasons before making substantial changes. This was the advice of an older woman I once knew who owned a small farm. I keep a lot of images in my head of things that I’ve observed about this property that inform my later decisions for designs. Often, I’ll change my mind many times about what to do with a site as I note the soil saturation, observe the amount of summer shade, or consider how often I visit an area and at what angle I usually view it. Landscaping takes time, contrary to how it is often billed to the public.
H. Have an understanding partner who also loves to garden. I’ve been quite lucky in that regard!

Tom helping me out at yet another plant sale. I've benefited greatly from his generous support and collaboration.
This year will be a good one for the garden; I’ve many ideas that I’ve gathered from my local gardening community, plus a wealth of new knowledge from my classes and readings. As I watch the sky for cloud breaks, I am eager to emerge from my den and start working once more.