Low-Cost Gifts For Gardeners

Nandina Berries

The Christmas and holiday season is fast upon us and we’ve been assailed at every media outlet available about “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.”  Wouldn’t it be nice to have some cheap, low-cost gift ideas that the gardener in your life will enjoy?  Imagine being able to put together a thoughtful and useful gift for just a  few dollars! So today I’ll give you three ideas that may help you make the most of your money, at least for the gardener.

Make Something:

It’s a whole lot easier to spend money than to make something for someone else and that’s exactly why it means more when you do create a gift. Gardeners enjoy all kinds of handmade items to put or use in the garden like birdhouses, birdfeeders, plant labels, signs, or hypertufa (I know someone reading this just said hyper what? That will have to be saved for a future post!). For a garden club meeting this weekend where we will be exchanging gifts I’m putting together a small plant propagation chamber made from a storage container and a few small pots all for less than $15.  Hopefully someone using the propagator will be able to add some extra value to the present through free plants later! I may stick a few hardwood cuttings in with the present. Gardeners always love free plants.  You could even go with something more seasonal and make a wreath from the evergreen plants and plants with berries in your garden. Nandinas (see picture above) and pyracantha have bright berries that are perfect for decorative holiday arrangements. Hollies, Leyland cypress, and cedar are easily available in many areas for more low cost Christmas decorating.

Gather Something:

Collect seeds from your favorite vegetables and flowers to give as a gift pack or stocking stuffer. You can get creative with the packaging and decorate envelopes or make your own paper packet out of gift paper. A fellow garden blogger and author (you have to get one of her books someday if you haven’t already!) Nancy Ondra showed me on her blog (Hayefield) how to put together seed packets just by folding paper – no glue, scissors, staples or tape required. I added one little thing to her idea and used wrapping paper instead to give the seeds a Christmas flavor. If you don’t have any seeds from your garden still available gather up some leftover seeds from your collection and repackage them into the variety pack.  Seeds remain easily viable for a couple years if kept cool and dry and very few people use all their seeds every year (my collection seems to grow faster than my garden!).  Giving a child a gift of a garden through seeds is not only fun but educational!

Think Food:

This should go without saying but when the Holidays come, who doesn’t think of food? Why not give someone some of your preserved vegetable crop from the summer harvests. Tomato sauce, pickles, relishes, and jams from the garden that haven’t been processed in a factory far across the country are the perfect thing to satisfy anyone who misses fresh food from the garden during the winter. This summer we bought a box of peaches from our local extension service. They were delicious but we couldn’t finish them so what we couldn’t eat became peach preserves. We’ll give them as gifts to various people this Christmas.

I hope you can put some of these ideas to use this year for your holiday gifts. If not remember them for next year when you are harvesting thousands of cucumbers and tomatoes and don’t know what to do with them or when your zinnias and marigolds have gone wild with flowers and seeds. A little planning ahead and a little creative thinking can save you a few dollars later.  After all, it’s the “thought that counts!”

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