The Wild & Free Garden (transform your outdoor space)
The Wild & Free Garden is a unique guide to creating a stunning outdoor space, using found materials, community connections and your own creativity. No more big expensive trips to the garden centre!
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (also read how to stop birds flying into windows).
You can design a beautiful and inspiring garden at next-to-nothing with this book. The author shows how to tap into the sharing economy, where you can find free or low-cost materials of good quality and style, when you know where and how to look.
Create a garden that reflects your individual style and personality, and also spend and waste less. And uncover an abundance that money can’t buy. With each project, you’ll grow a deeper connection to your garden and community.
This is how gardens used to be built, when family and neighbours rallied round, and everyone was in tune with nature. With vibrant colour photos, learn how to:
- Develop a sharing economy mindset
- Find quality materials for free
- Create a sustainable yard that reduces waste
- Design the garden of your dreams
- Be inspire by other wild and free gardeners
- Source information from community partners
- Save seeds for your own use, or plant swaps
- Repurpose furniture and find architectural salvage gems
- Grow community projects with neighbours (with shared tools)
- Set up a community rainwater collection system
Projects to inspire include:
- Building a dry creek (a meandering trench filled with rocks to mimic a natural dried stream, that directs rainwater away from foundations to prevent erosion)
- Planting a wildflower lawn (this includes native pollinators to give food for local bees, butterflies and nocturnal moths and bats).
- Using a vintage trailer as a guesthouse (use this as your ‘happy hermit’ place for prayer, writing or art, or simply as a talking point for garden visitors!)
Stephanie invites us to slow down, release habitual consumption and refocus on what matters: resourcefulness, community and connection to the earth and one another. Kelly Smith Trimble
About the Author
Stephanie Rose is a writer, who aims to encourage better living through plants! She is a long-time student of organic garden, permaculture design and natural skin care, and focuses on regenerative practices that are healthy and natural. She also volunteers to build children’s gardens in Vancouver, Canada.
