Frugal and Freecycle Landscaping

One of my passions in life is landscaping and working outdoors. Another passion and sometimes obsession of mine is to live frugally. Unfortunately, when these two passions come together, the sometimes frugal obsession in me always wins. One of the hardest things for me to deal with in regards to frugal living is reducing our family’s landscaping expenses. Many years ago (before kids), I would go to the local nursery and pick up all sorts of plants and trees and anything imaginable that you could use for landscaping. I took pride in having the greenest lawn in the neighborhood and the best looking landscaping. I would often have neighbors stop and ask me all kinds of questions about my landscaping and give me tons of complements. Then one day, after our first son was born, I realized I needed to focus on different passions in life and began to cut back in our landscaping and outdoor costs.

To give you an idea on how much I have cut back in landscaping expenses, in the 6 months that we have been in our new home, I have spent a grand total of $18.00 on landscaping. This is a brand new home which means it has very little curb appeal, so $18 does not really go a long way. This expense included a bag of grass seed and a few perennials to add some color to the front of the house. On a side note, I don’t buy annuals for the obvious reason. While I understand annuals typically produced the best colors, they don’t come back and I consider it a waste of my money. I need to see a multi-year return on investment! I will note that our home did come with sod in the front yard (not in the back) and some landscaping in the front which has helped out a lot.

The other day my father called me up with two very frugal opportunities. Given our very limited landscaping monthly budget, I jumped at the following opportunities -

Patio Stone
My parents recently hired a company to come in and rip up an existing patio they had in their back yard from a previous owner of the home. The old patio was made from large sections of flagstone but was uneven which caused some drainage issues. My parents wanted to put in a brick paver patio in place of the flagstone. When the demolition crew came in to start ripping up the existing patio, my father asked them what they do with all the materials. One of the workers told him that it would be going to a landfill and that it was already factored into the quoted price. Luckily my father, understanding my passion for landscaping, called me up and asked if I would be interested in the flagstone. I told him absolutely and the crew came up immediately to our house and dropped it off. It actually saved my parents money because the company waived the fee to dump it in the landfill and also reduced the amount they paid to take it to the landfill. Our house was about 15 miles closer than the landfill, so they pro-rated the expense. At the end of the day, I felt very proud of our freecycle opportunity. We saved my parents money and got some excellent flagstone that I will be using to create a raised flower bed in the front our our house. Most importantly, we prevented a bunch of usable natural materials from going into a landfill!

Free Plants
As part of my parents backyard project, they dug up several overgrown perennials that had invaded their backyard. As part of my father’s call earlier in the week, he also asked if I was interested in any of the plants he cut back? Of course, I accepted his offer and now have several wonderful perennials to plant in my soon to be new raised flower bed in front of the house.

Tagged as: freecycle, Frugal