Miss 3's tyre garden

I've seen this idea in several places and thought it looked good. Use an old car tyre as the outside wall of a little raised bed garden.

We found a car tyre under the house (some days it is handy to have bought a house with a very large pile of junk under it), painted it with some leftover paint (so it doesn't get too hot in the summer sun) and left it to dry while we pottered in the garden.

Miss 3 chose a place for her garden. I had made the tactical blunder of suggesting probably the two best spots in the garden, which practically forced her to insist on a space in the cold and dark, but I managed to at least shift it into dappled sunshine, rather than complete shade. I dug over a patch to loosen up the earth and then we went to the garden centre.

Given the choice between pretty flowers to look at and things to eat, our wee cherub chose goodness for her tummy. So we picked a punnet of 4 herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme and garlic chives), and a punnet of 6 red-shaft silverbeet (chard). She really likes going out to pick things for the garden to put in our dinner, so this should work well.

Then we just moved the tyre into position, filled it up with a mix of compost and soil pilfered from elsewhere in the garden and planted it out. Voila! She's very proud of her very own wee garden.