Garden ideas: utilities and storage

The need to find room for less attractive bits and pieces of the garden - such as the dustbins (garbage cans) and the compost heap - is a fact of life, but utilities like these need not be on show. With a little imagination of garden ideas they can be completely disguised or made to blend in with their surroundings. Storage space in  garden will also be needed for the amount of practical paraphernalia that gardening brings, from garden tools and pots and planters to potting compost (soil mix), seeds and string.

Garden tips for garbage cans: In an ideal, dustbins (garbage cans) and recycling containers would be beautiful in themselves, but, unfortunately, in reality they are seldom attractive. They are necessary, however, and they do not need to be accessible. You can ignore your garbage cans or spend a little time and effort blending them in, by painting them to co-ordinate with the overall garden design, using a screen of plants to hide them, or camouflaging them with a plant-covered trellis.

Garden tips and ideas: Compost bins

Compost is an invaluable aid for any gardener, no matter how small or large is your garden. Material for composting can simply be piled in a heap in a corner and left to rot, but a manufactured container certainly look more appealing in your garden design. Those made of plastic tend to resemble rubbish bins (garbage cans), so why not treat them in the same way, either decorating them or screening them with plants. An alternative is to make your own container from suitably treated timber, painted to match the house or rest of the garden furniture. The garden design can be very simple, with timber slats fixed to corner posts, or more imaginative - such as a compost bin in the shape of traditional beehive!