Garden Junk

by Bill Pitts

Nearly every garden I visit includes salvaged materials of some kind, or what is affectionately known as “garden junk.” A rusted-out wheelbarrow planted with flowers is now a convention observed even in “serious” gardens. The bottle tree, once restricted to African-American swept yards, has gone mainstream and is the subject of an article in the New YorkTimes and even a book-in-progress by Southern garden guru, Felder Rushing.

The uses of junk in the garden are endless. Yogurt and butter tubs, coffee cans, bushel baskets, dish pans, virtually any receptacle that can last the growing season can serve as a flower pot. Just drill some holes in the bottom for drainage. For larger plants, use garbage cans or 55-gallon drums. Even a leaky boat can be filled with potting soil and planted out. The garden will seem near a river or lake even if it’s miles away.

Salvaged materials can be used for hardscape, too. Marcia Mearer, a cottage gardener in Sanford, uses bricks scavenged by her husband for all of her paved areas. Susan Clarke, a gardener in Ocklawaha, has an impressive path made with hundreds of beer bottles donated by a local bar. She simply buried them neck-down in the sand so that the bottoms form an even surface. Though seemingly fragile, the path has lasted for years with only one weed-eater-related break.

Old iron headboards are a standard trellis in the world of garden junk, but vines can also be trained up rickety ladders, television antennas, steel conduit, salvaged page wire or rebar. The last two rust nicely. If you have the time, patience and a willow tree or bamboo patch, you can even make your own wattle for a trellis, edging or screen.

In central Florida, the laurel oak is a major trash tree, but when they’re felled — or when they fall over by themselves — they make picturesque fences. Laid on their sides, the thicker trunks create an instant barrier. Resurrection ferns, lichens, moss and air plants will continue to grow on them. They can be further planted with bromeliads and orchids. Medium-sized trunks and limbs can be sawn into logs and set upright like dock pilings or stacked horizontally like firewood.

A good design is important when using junk in the garden. A common approach is to choose a single piece as a focal point to a view, as you would with sculpture. The bottle tree at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens in Gainesville is placed away from the rose trellises, knot gardens and many other sights that might compete with it. Bamboo thickets and native trees serve as a neutral backdrop. This placement allows us to really see the colored glass glowing in the sun, the jaunty angles of the rebar “limbs” and the weathered stump that forms the base and makes the whole “tree” seem a fantastic growth at the wood’s edge. We can feel, if never understand, the bottle tree’s meaning.

Other “junk” looks better in a small, enclosed space. Take a concrete statue of a naked woman. Put her on an open lawn and she’s bound to look tacky. But hide her away in a tiny “garden room” with walls of evergreen shrubs and vines, place her so that she appears half-clothed by foliage and shadows, and she becomes mysterious. The setting creates the drama.

Many gardeners use smaller pieces of junk in a bedding scheme as they would plants. When arranged among flowers, colored glass objects (oil lamps, gazing balls), along with all sorts of metal things (twisted copper tubing, chrome pieces), extend the range of colors and textures in the planting, giving an aura of fantasy to the garden without overwhelming it.

Junk can be used for contrast, too. On its own, a used tire planted with strawberries is just that, but when placed in an arrangement of nice terra cotta and wooden containers overflowing with herbs, vegetables and flowers, that old tire can make the garden’s style attractively eclectic.

If junk is an eyesore but too useful to throw away, disguise it. Recycled black plastic nursery containers don’t look so bad with a coat of paint. Wrapped in burlap, they can have a rustic appeal. Sunk in the sand, they’re out of view but still serve their purpose, which brings me to another technique: hiding junk. A gangly indeterminate tomato in a split plastic 55-gallon drum will never be attractive, nor will cut-and-come-again collard greens in a faded aquamarine kiddie pool. I keep both behind a bamboo screen in an area of the garden reserved for hopelessly ugly things.

There are established garden-junk motifs. A pansy coaxed to grow in a worn-out boot suggests a fairyland garden likely to contain gnomes. Stepping stones of broken sidewalk and thick mulches of tree trimmers’ woodchips are signs of an environmentally-conscientious gardener. That said, these and other conventions are often “quoted” and juxtaposed for effect. A broken toilet planted with hot pink petunias usually has more to do with irreverent humor than bad taste.

Most gardeners sooner or later resort to buying mass-produced things. If it’s not pavers, it’s patio furniture or the much-cloned Knockout rose. Junk can help us resist the forces of homogenization. Wind chimes made out of scrap copper pipe can make a garden feel unique, even if they are hung on a mail-order arbor.

More importantly, when combined with the right plants, garden junk can strengthen a sense of place. Sun-bleached conch shells and pencil cedars evoke a casual Gulf Coast garden. Weathered snow fence and silver palmettos suggest beaches along the Atlantic. A wildflower
meadow with a galvanized watering trough “pond” can serve as a reminder that a site once was (or still is) central Florida cattle country. By providing these connections to the greater landscape and its traditions, junk can add to that sense of peace that comes only when a garden belongs where it is, and no place else.

© 2012 Bill Pitts. Originally published in Florida Gardening, Jun/Jul 2012. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.