• Use do-it-yourself compost made from grass clippings, leaves and kitchen fruit and vegetable waste.
   
• Find out if your municipality has free or cheap compost and mulch available.
   
• Purchase soil, well-rotted manure, triple mix, gravel and mulch by the cubic yard at garden and landscaping centres. You'll pay up to 50 per cent less than you would for bagged materials.
   
• Chip in for equipment. Share the rental fee for tillers, chippers or other equipment with neighbours.

When you should splurge

• Hire someone to dig that new bed or work a load of manure into an existing one—you can save your back and better use your time poring over plant books and catalogues to plan your garden's design.

Acquiring plants

Here's how to pack your beds with colour and variety at half the price:

Where you can save

• If you don't feel you need to have instant gratification, choose smaller-sized perennials and flowering shrubs. Perennials in four-inch pots and shrubs in one-gallon pots usually cost 50 to 65 per cent less than full-grown ones, and will soon catch up in size.
   
• Shop for annuals in flats. They're about 20 per cent cheaper than individual cells. Share with a friend.
   
• Buy roses bare root (without soil) from rose specialist mail order nurseries. Prices can be 30 to 50 per cent lower than at your garden centre, and the selection is often wider.
   
• Grow annuals from seed. With at least 50 seeds per packet, you'll get a lovely patch of plants for as little as $1.50. Try cosmos, larkspur, love-in-a-mist or hyacinth bean vine.
   
• Shop plant sales. Check with arboretums, botanical gardens, expert gardeners or fundraising community groups.
   
• Know your climate and conditions so you don't buy plants that won't thrive in your space.

When you should splurge

• Buy perennials instead of annuals. For about $8, you can buy a dozen annuals that will last one season or, for the same money, get one large or three small perennials that will return each spring. Good choices include: Asiatic lily, hosta, shasta daisy, bearded iris, Siberian iris, daylily and peony.
   
• Shop at specialty nurseries. Plants may be pricier, but these shops provide expert advice, plants you might not be able to find elsewhere and a better guarantee.
   
• Invest in a medium-size tree (up to 10 feet/three metres tall). A medium-sized trees will give you more impact in the garden sooner than a very small tree, and you will avoid the cost and potential problems of planting a large tree. Very large trees with heavy root balls are expensive to buy and need to be professionally planted and often suffer from transplant shock.