Bucks woman transforms garden without spending a fortune

When Anya Lautenbach moved to her home in Buckinghamshire 11 years ago, the garden, if you could call it that, didn’t have a single plant.

But in just over a decade, the digital creator and self-taught gardener from Poland has transformed her half-acre space into a cacophony of colour, with sweeping lavender borders, beautiful swathes of perennials and fragrant climbing roses.

The whole thing has cost her around £1,000, she reckons, because she has grown from seed, propagated, made money-saving purchases from community marketplaces and also makes her own compost and fertiliser.

“You can create the most breathtaking, stunning garden, spending hardly any money,” she insists.

“It’s always been been in harmony with nature,” she explains of the garden she has created.

“We didn’t do much hard landscaping. We already had the patio and used some old paving slabs and some gravel to create a little hard landscaping,” but she much prefers the plants to be the focus.

Today, the mother-of-two demonstrates all the skills she’s learned on her Instagram feed @anya_thegarden_fairy, where she has amassed 465,000 followers and another 58,000 on TikTok, where she offers money-saving gardening tips.

She has also written The Money-Saving Gardener to help people create their dream garden at a fraction of the cost.

Anya said: "Anything that my garden produces I turn into precious materials. I improve my soil by using grass cuttings. I have clay soil and didn’t have enough money to buy mushroom compost so I started putting grass cuttings on my borders.

"Over the years that has created amazing soil.”

For people who are doing a little bit of gardening, a fork and trowel and maybe a spade and a rake are necessary, but only add to your tool collection gradually, depending on the size of the garden and the storage area, she recommends.

“You don’t have to buy new tools. If you have a local village group, whether it’s a gardening group or on social media, reach out and ask if anyone’s getting rid of any gardening stuff. Sometimes people will give you things for free, whether it’s tools, pots or even plants that they’ve grown," Anya added.

She also encourages people to buy plants on sale.

"Plants that are in the sale may look dishevelled, but they should come back, given the right conditions", she says.

“You get a great sense of achievement if you rescue plants, as well as saving money. Go at the end of the season because you’ll get amazing plants for half price.”

Her book The Money-Saving Gardener: Create Your Dream Garden At A Fraction Of The Cost by Anya Lautenbach is published by DK on February 8, priced at £16.99.