
Creative Ways To Show Your Love
Hate going mall shopping?
On a no-buy month to save some cash?
Here's three super-low-cost horticultural ways to show someone you care this Valentine's Day x
 
1. Lend a Hand
Gardeners will always appreciate someone helping out with the maintenance:mowing their lawn, weeding their borders (so long as you can tell the weeds from their prized plants...),
washing old plastic pots out - and for the truly energetic or besotted, turning their compost heap.
It's a mucky job but someone's got to do it...
 

 
2. Go Visit a Garden
Take a trip together to one of the 140 botanic gardens in Australia, or even go for a walk around your local park or green space. There's heaps of free gardens and parks around the country, and you'll get fresh air and fresh ideas for your garden.Pack a notebook, and a tasty picnic to share!
 

3. Creative Clipping & Curating
Get crafty and creative with some made-from-the-heart plant-and-flower art.You don't have to be artistic; there's all kinds of ways you can create something beautifully romantic with plants - and often for free!
 
- Go on a garden treasure hunt and find a perfect heart-shaped leaf - press it in a hardback book if you need to preserve it for later.
 
Free crafty ideas, you just need a little skill and patience

- clip a dense groundcover or climbing vine into a heart shape - It's a lasting show of love x
- clip the top of a bushy hedge into a row of hearts
- carefully cut a heart into a leaf
- thread a daisy-chain necklace to wear
 
From easy-as instant results, to a little more skilled but still quick Clockwise, from top left:- tubestock plants arranged in a heart (these are Fittonia) - you can do this with flowerheads too ;
- flower petals filling a heart-shaped outline ;
- a heart-shaped hole cut in the centre of a leaf ;
- and Ozbreed's native coast rosemary, Low Horizon, clipped into a neat heart shape.
 
These will take a little bit of planning and planting, ahead of time; and perhaps a little cost

- succulent hearts from Melbourne Flower & Garden Show
- succulent plantings surrounded by a heart of pebbles
- succulents in a heart, planted in an old wheelbarrow
- and a topiary heart frame, filled with succulents and moss.
 
Spell out your love with flowers In our header image at the top you can see camellia blooms spelling the word 'LOVE'. You could use any flowers which lay obligingly flat - daisies are good. Collect up fallen blooms. Lay them out to spell your message, or your loved one's name. That's it!Using fallen flowers also prevents you getting yelled at for picking fresh flowers off a prized bush;after all, we don't want to start such a romantic day by making someone cross...!
 
If you are very organised, or love surprises, you can plant bulbs or sow seed to spell out your words of love instead. This will give you the same effect as the flower-message above, with a longer payoff! (And less chance of them blowing away in the breeze...)Bah Humbug to Valentine's Day
Plant kindness, gather love.
 
Feeling very single at this time of year? Treat yourself to a new indoor plant of your choice, for a companion that's always pleased to see you, and that will return your care and affection with new leaves and the odd surprise flower to bring you joy.This gardener has chosen a fatsia - exotic looking yet easy to look after, frost hardy yet jungle-lush and leafy. 
Find your perfect plant partner in our range - one that's always pleased to see you, doesn't hog the remote or doona, and won't nag you about the washing up. We have over 700 plants to choose from, which is better odds than the local speed dating night... 
Hate the whole idea of Valentine's Day? Celebrate Galentine's Day instead, and thank your beautiful friends for their friendship on 13th February. 
And if you're by yourself this Valentine's Day, remember the wise words of artist Jean-Jacques Rousseau:"Plant, and your spouse plants with you,
Weed, and you weed alone..."