GREENWOOD DIY

Gardeners are busy people. This is not new, the typical cottage or kitchen garden would have been tended after a hard day at work with scant inclination for time-consuming frills. There were no garden centres and the structures they created from local materials had to be easy and quick requiring only simple skills. One result of the increasing consumer culture is that we have overcome our shame of being unable to do simple tasks for ourselves. A whole area of garden design is denied us as we become more and more dependent on the garden centre than that what is growing freely around us.

Simple Skills for Simple People

Many gardeners are women who have all too commonly been disenfranchised from the household toolbox! An unspoken power struggle exists where the gardener wishing to have some appealing item built for the garden, (claimed to be no problem by the custodian of the toolbox) seems to take a long-time to appear, if at all. In the end a poor substitute is bought from the garden centre denting the custodian of the toolboxes' ego and frustrating the gardener with the feeling that things are not quite right!

Real Men Don't Need Power Tools!

Working wood green i.e.. taken straight from the wood or hedge has a number of benefits including the ease of working and simplicity of the tools required. The down side is that products made can be less stable and liable to warping particularly when kept indoors but there are ways to avoid this if you are interested in taking things further. No need then for the full power tool range to build a simple item, removing some of the status of the toolbox.

Greenwood DIY

We have therefore invented a new discipline called Greenwood DIY. Based on using cheaply or freely available freshly cut wood and twigs a wide range of garden DIY projects are described. These use only simple but long established skills and techniques and help you to create the rustic products and gardens of your choice. Follow the links for details on making a wide range of products. We also want to hear about your projects in order to inspire others. Use the project profile sheet to describe your project and email/snailmail with pictures. All contributions acknowledged and photo's returned where requested.