Recycling and Re-purposing at the ECCG (tennis balls and more)

At the Empty Common Community Garden, we focus largely on sustainability and permaculture (growing in a more self-sufficient and environmentally friendly way). As well as this, we commonly recycle, reuse and re-purpose old items to help us with something new.

For example, we have several uses for discarded tennis balls, which are kindly collected for us by Ian's dog.

Here, a tennis ball is placed on the end of a cane post, which is used
to support wiring around a plant bed. The tennis ball covers the
sharp end of the cane.

Another idea, involving support of canes, uses the tennis
balls to help balance nets securely over the plants. This
is very helpful at protecting produce from being eaten
by wildlife.

Again, tennis balls are stuck on the end of canes. As seen in the picture,
this also works well for canes that support growing plants in our
polytunnel.

 

Here are some pictures of different re-purposing around the garden:

We are currently in the process of the creation of our new
meeting hut. This is a picture of its base, which is made
of recycled materials.

In this picture, plastic cloches are used to
shelter some of the plants in the bed. We
were given them by someone who had
not ended up using them.

We used old plastic bottles to support the bottom of tomato
plants and help them grow upwards.

Here, plastic bottles are placed over plants that are growing against canes.
This protects them from being eaten, as well as reusing plastic.

Other examples:

• Pallet compost heaps
• The use of old, second-hand bike racks
• The pond and both our sheds are also second-hand
• The mulch depot was made of old decking and reclaimed slabs
• The bee home in our garden was made from off-cuts from another project
• Our toilet is made from old doors from a skip
• Our fire pit is a deflector from the top of an old outside gas heater, also found in a skip
• We have a plant bed that was made from a thrown-out partially-broken trampoline
• And almost all of our tools are from Ameycespa recycling.