This is an attractive way of making garden furniture – and a fine example of thrifty design. But we can’t say it is the most comfortable or the most quick-drying garden furniture we have ever used!

. One hopes this will never become a really popular idea – but one has to admit that it is pretty well done here! It is also a sustainable design, because it is surely a far better use of old washing machines than dumping them in landfill sites.

Here is a really easy way to make a green roof: keep your old branches, arrange them on a frame and place turfs on top. This idea works particularly well if you have a coppice tree in your garden – which is both a traditional and a beautiful idea, as Monet and Van Gogh showed in their paintings.

Here is a good, cheap and sustainable way to make a feature and a divider for gardens: keep your old logs and place them, artistically, in a line. They are great for conservation – the wild life advisory bodies are always telling us to let old timber rot. The dead wood creates ideal living space for insects – and birds love eating insects.

This blog and this website are about high quality designer products for gardens. In the long term, high quality provides the best value because it gives the most use and the most pleasure. We are therefore attracted to thrifty garden design, with ‘thrifty’ meaning ‘a reluctance to spend money unnecessarily’. If we have to spend money, we do it. But if we can do things in a thrifty way –  we like it. Thrifty garden design is related to 

• recycle garden design
• green garden design 
• sustainable garden design

But it is not the same as any of them and it has a very distinghished pedigree. Composting is an ancient garden practice and was done for thrifty reasons. Using local materials was often for thrifty reasons. So was using local plants. Though happy to do what what we can to recycle materials, support a green agenda and save  the planet, we are even happier to work as our gardening predecessors have always worked: thriftily, conscientiously and with restrained good taste. So look at the below  photograph. It shows a thrifty use of garden ‘waste’ to make a beautiful pavilion. We like it. The above image is of a garden firebowl, by Ungers, which recycles garden wood.

Crinklecrankle Fibreglass Planters  are elegant, durable, good for water conservation and a thrifty choice in terms of value for money.

Please let us know of any other beautiful and useful items – we would  be pleased to sell them!

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (1895-1983 was one of the earliest and greatest green activists and designers. He is best known for the Geodesic Dome. This is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure. It is based on a network of great circles (geodesics) lying on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the entire structure. As a garden designer, there is no better way to demonstrate one’s green credentials than to have a geodesic greenhouse in your garden.

This handsome firebowl was made out of recycled steel. Unlike the trashy barbecue bombs sold in garden hardware stores, it always looks good – and especially when a fire is burning. AND the designer has adopted a ‘thrifty green’ approach by using recycled materials to make a highly durable firebasket.

We thank the designer, John T. Unger, for the image and send him our support. Someone copied his design. John wrote a cease and desist letter. The copyist responded by going to court to have John’s existing copyrights overturned – arguing that because there is a functional element, the firebowls shouldn’t be eligible for copyright. He now threatens an expensive lawsuit, hoping that John will not be able to afford it. We hope John will fight and win.