I miss the good old days when you were allowed to scavenge at the tip. Some of my best house and garden finds came from the Green Island dump near Dunedin, where a trip to deposit the garden rubbish always resulted in coming away with more than we'd left.
Since I've grown up, I've tried to develop an appreciation for hugely expensive pieces of bronze garden sculpture created by famous New Zealand artists, and while I can certainly admire them, I can never get past the fact that they cost considerably more than my car and are not nearly so useful.
So I've always been, and look set to remain, a junk girl. On garden safaris, I'm the one exclaiming over the artfulness of a skilfully positioned coil of old rope and a rusty watering can, while ignoring the pricey Paul Dibble on the deck.
And I never throw anything broken away. Friends gave me a small, ceramic hippopotamus from The Louvre which got broken a few years ago, and I couldn't bear to part with it. Thus the front end peers out of a pot plant by the front door, the amputation of its nether regions hidden by foliage, while its bum can be seen hiding amongst the irises in another part of the garden.
My garden is a bit bereft of artful junk since the last flood, so if you see me sneakily fossicking around the back of your garage anytime soon, you'll know what I'm after. Show me an old box with printing on the side, an iron wheel or a broken gate, and I'm in heaven.
Not everyone, of course, can immediately see the merit in someone else's cast-offs, so if you're bereft of such ideas but like the idea of enhancing your outdoor spaces without spending a fortune, you'll need to develop a different perspective. So a broken hippopotamus becomes two shy hippopotami, while a piece of rusty agricultural equipment is not junk but the base of a seat or table, or the centrepiece of a new garden bed. (Our neighbour has gone slightly overboard on this idea and has positioned a charming, if very rusty, tractor as a piece of artwork at his gate.)
The trick with garden junk, as opposed to garden art, is to create an appropriate setting for it. While a stunning bronze statue needs to stand alone so it can be properly appreciated, a slightly-the-worse-for-wear ceramic urn may want to sit on a handcrafted timber base, its broken bits disguised by appropriate planting. (An enthusiastic fatsia or a couple of well-grown carex will hide a multitude of sins.)
I'm not suggesting, however, that you fill your garden with junk at the expense of one or two great pieces of real garden art. There are countless local artists who produce wonderful outdoor pieces ranging in price from a couple of hundred dollars to tens of thousands, and it's brilliant to be able to include one if you can afford it. If you choose well, your artwork will elicit gasps from visitors, while your junk will bring smiles.
I'm still saving up for mine. If I don't reach target in the next while, I'll just park the car on the lawn.
Weekend project: DIY barbecue
Not everyone loathes those big, shiny, ostentatious, complicated barbecues with 27 burners and a built-in breadmaker (kidding about the breadmaker), but they just don't do it for us.
So in line with our junk-collecting policy, the partner has dismantled our hideous, red, two-burner gas barbecue, rescued the grill and the solid plate, and is designing a good old-fashioned barbecue, fuelled by wood. He's a dab hand at cooking on these. Get your fire going a good hour before you want to cook, enjoy a glass or two while you're waiting, and start cooking when there's a good bed of embers to keep the temperature up.
If you want to make one, you'll easily find a wrecked $5 barbecue in a garage sale which still has a grill and a solid plate. Then it's simply a matter of using your design skills to find something to support it on. Note: if you want a really big barbecue, one of those cast-iron plates that were used years ago to span the kerb into your driveway is the perfect thing.
If you'd like to make suggestions, ask questions, agree, disagree, advise, elaborate, comment or berate, please email Leigh Bramwell at info@gardenpress.net