Out & About September 2017

OA gardening Recycling within gardens schemes

With a bit of creative thought, unwanted items can add charm to a garden. KATE GOULD explains how she created a ‘recycled’ outdoor area to stunning effect

W e live in a world now where kettles, televisions and other electrical items are not built to last as they were for my parents’ generation. In most cases a new television or fridge is cheaper than mending an old one, so it is not surprising then that we generate more waste than ever before. Although these items can be recycled, they have no use within the garden concept. For items to recycle into an exterior scheme we have to think far more broadmindedly. Old stone, metal and timber are the most popular items to be reused within a garden scheme. Care should be taken with old stone such as Yorkstone, which would need a skilled landscaper to lay it, since it is not of an even thickness. The larger slabs can weigh 150 to 200kg, which makes handling them a careful process. Similarly, old timbers – gnarled and twisted – can look beautiful in the garden and sculptural enough to stand alone as a piece of art. At the 2013 Chelsea flower show, we created a show garden called The Wasteland, which transformed a perceived old water pumping station into a usable community space, using the leftover infrastructure and items that we “imagined” would be found on the site. These ubiquitous items of rubbish were those that we see on a regular basis lying by the side of the road or in skips and they were transformed into interesting and, very importantly, attractive pieces that could have a viable second life in a garden. There were some items that we wished we could transform such as traffic cones, wheelie bins and old vehicle tyres, but with time and budget press-

the maritime salvage yard, were too good to miss and injected character and fun into the garden. Salvage yards are full of old bits of machinery that you might not know the use for, but could easily become a plinth for a sculpture, a prop for a seat or simply a decorative piece in its own right. Often these pieces are slightly rusted, but if this is not to your taste, then they can be cleaned up and painted, or if you do like the rust then they can be left as they are and appreciated as they gently age. The garden for all of its so-called ‘rubbish’ was exceptionally well received and the overall com- ment was “pretty” or “beautiful”, which just goes to show that reusing items with a bit of thought can create an attractive space that people want to spend time in. It will never be possible to recycle everything into a garden, but if we are more careful with how we think about our waste and consider whether something can have a second life, then we will be much farther towards a world where we no longer turn to landfill as the first and only option for broken items.

ing we settled on a few interesting pieces such as our old glulam bridge. Glulam is a process where sheets of wood are glued and laminated together. This process enables architects to design buildings with huge spans of curved or shaped rooves that do not require steel beams, but are just as strong. I even- tually found a specialist company that recycles its old glulam products. I wanted to create an ad- ditional seating area in the garden, one for five or six people to sit together on and ideally it should be from recycled wood. It would have been quite ordinary to build a new subframe out of metal and then clad it with reclaimed wood, but using glulam meant that we would not have to use a new metal frame. What was offered was a section of a 30-year-old bridge, complete with rusty nails, screw-holes and missing bits where bolts had been drilled through and removed. This was perfect and the result was a cantile- vered bench so strong and sound that with only four bolts it held, unmoving under the combined weight of six hefty landscapers. The patina of the wood and the addition of all the accoutrements that came with its previous use greatly added to its charm and it was an area in the garden that people who used the space gravitated towards because of its generous size and inviting nature. Another thing we salvaged were some old valves. These came off a ship and were made of steel weighing approximately 200kg each. These were used to hold up two concrete planks that formed seats. We could have easily put a recycled wooden block underneath, but these valves, again found in

Kate Gould is an award- winning garden designer with more than a decade’s hands-on experience transforming gardens of all sizes and is a regular exhibitor at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where she has been awarded three gold medals. www.kategouldgardens.com

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