Thursday, September 27, 2012

Garden Tour San Antonio Style: The Re-purposed Garden

This week I'm posting gardens from The San Antonio Herb Society Garden Tour. The fourth garden on our tour is the "Re-purposed" garden located in the suburbs west of town.

My friend Ragna accompanied me on the tour and we had fun visiting this colorful garden full of ideas for recycling and reusing found items.



This property has a unique story.  The pool was originally a community pool. When the homeowner's association decided to close it, the owner was able to purchase the pool and property for the bargain price of $10.  Replacing a couple of windows with glass doors and adding a porch on the side of her house next door created a special space for gardening and relaxing.



Bright and cheery seating areas.





This garden with its long runs of fence is a great place to display found and re-purposed items.  Mrs. "B" sometimes finds things left outside the gate to use in the garden.

Bright colors freshen up old metal chairs and plant stands.  This is the only patch of lawn, there is a bit of horseherb for groundcover along the fence and the rest is flowers, veggies, and herbs.



The fence is decorated all around with found and re-purposed items.

The saying on the platter reads "Flowers Feed the Soul".





This vintage wagon ended up on the fence when Mrs. "B" got tired of pulling the hose around it.  A brightly painted headboard and hyacinth bean vine complete the vignette.








This huge Texas wind chime was made of galvanized fence parts.


 Raised beds for lettuce are built on a brightly painted desk.



 A scrap of lace used as a shade cover for lettuce starts instead of shadecloth.  Someone left this desk outside the gate.




The pond was added recently when she found a pump on clearance at the hardware store.  Carpet scraps are used under the mulch to keep weeds down.



An old stump for planting herbs.  Everything was labeled and we received a plant list.

 

 
Mrs. "B's" wooden washing machine circa 1905 is usually inside, but she put it on display along with a wooden ironing board for the garden tour.  We also received a handout with recipes for making our own cleaning products at home.



Welding class at the local high school provided the opportunity to add these panels to the fence.  She used the plasma cutter to create the designs.


Logs used as edging for a bed


Each garden on the tour was sponsored by a local garden center with a gift certificate to the owners.  The advertising worked well because I've been considering weeping yaupon for my own garden so I'll head over to The Garden Center soon for one just like the one Mrs. "B" bought with part of her gift certificate.


Thank you Mrs. "B", we enjoyed meeting you and touring your garden.



The San Antonio Herb Society tour benefits culinary scholarships to St. Philip's College here in San Antonio. The San Antonio Herb Society holds is one of the sponsors of the popular San Antonio Herb Market event held each year by the Herb Market Association. This year the market is on October 20th at The Pearl

We visited six gardens on this tour and tomorrow I'll share the "Xeriscape" garden and overall impressions of the tour. For a look back at "Urban Chic" click here.

5 comments:

  1. Very nice, that spot under the tree with the barbecue take me back to our previous home, we used to have long nights with a fire and a glass!:-)

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  2. The style is a little kitshy for my taste, but I know many will adore it, and I admire her inventiveness. Isn't it wonderful how complete strangers seek to contribute once someone takes the trouble to make a real statement? When we gardened in town, I often found plants left on the doorstep.

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  3. Very cute artsy knick knacky garden with lots of color and personality. We all need to add a little bit of that into our own gardens:)

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  4. I bet Mrs. "B" has a fun personality! I especially love that wagon on the wall! I am also impressed with her getting a $10 pool! What a bargain! Very smart of the garden center to give the owners a gift certificate. If I had toured this in person, I would have rushed right over to that center to get my own weeping yaupon!

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  5. Mrs. "B" and her garden are delightful. She has collected a wonderful array of 'junque' but the bright colors and fun arrangments keeps it from looking like 'junk' as well as highlighting the shapes and forms of the repurposed pieces. She shows how one can have a bright and cheery garden on a shoestring budget with an imagination plus a few cans of paint.

    Ragna

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