Re: Finding "cheap" bricks or cement blocks for edging

And if I may follow up on Diana's great suggestion... years ago, we priced out doing all of our hardscape -- walkways, retaining walls, etc -- using flagstone. The price was prohibitive so we got on the phone and started calling truckers and pool installers and concrete pourers and amassed a great stockpile of broken concrete for pennies. Usually, if we were closer to the job site than the dump was, they'd be happy to drop it off at no cost as they pay tipping fees to the dump (not to mention the time and resources it takes to get there).

We installed the broken concrete as we would have done flagstone. Visitors are AMAZED when they find out what the material is. We found that we had two colors of broken concrete -- gray and pink which was very similar to the flagstone color we were looking at. So, we used only pink in the front garden and used the gray in back.

There are some things to know about if you want to use broken concrete so if anyone is interested, drop me a line off-list and I'll share some of our lessons learned.

Nan


Dear perennial friends:

Last week I found a way to buy both bricks and cement blocks at amazingly
cheap prices.  I needed at least 30 feet of cement blocks to protect my
newest shrub and perennial border from our summer "weed wacker" people who
don't seem to know the weeds from the plants.

I visited a local building supply company that maintains a "bargain yard"
consisting of the leftovers from finished jobs.  I found 36 solid white
cement blocks with a nice finished "front" for only 25 cents a block.  I
couldn't have bought the standard "gray" cement blocks for this price.  Have
picked up nice bricks for edgings for as little as 5 or 10 cents apiece from
the same place in the past.

If any of you need edging, check out your local building supply.  You may be
able to pick up nice looking edging material much cheaper than the "plastic
edging" sold in garden centers.

Just a suggestion.

Diana Pederson, Michigan, USDA Zone 5
gardening.bellaonline.com
houseplants.bellaonline.com

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Nan Sterman			Plant Soup (TM)
Please note new mailing address:
PO Box 231034
Encinitas, CA 92023		760.634.2902 (voice)
NSterman@PlantSoup.Com		760.634.2957 (fax)

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