I don’t know about you, but I look at Pinterest all the time.  It used to be a time suck, but now I do a lot of pinning while I am nursing the baby, so I count it as multitasking.  I love looking at all of the neat ways people out in the world maximize space in their gardens.  My latest obsessions are these amazing gutter gardens.  There are so many neat tutorials out there on how to make these awesome gardens.  Here is one that I loved from this super cute blog Borealis, my only problem is we don’t own, so we can’t drill into the fence.  I have been brainstorming ideas in my head for a few weeks now and came up with what I think to be a pretty solid idea.  To complete the gutter garden I need exceptionally large washers, and some sort of chain link, gutters (obviously) and end caps.  I really am hoping my idea works without, a. breaking the fence; b. falling from the fence; c. looking so bad I have to take it down; and d. all of the above.

This sent me and the petites to Home Depot.

Step One: Find Parts Needed.  I found the 10 foot long gutter right away – check.  Then the end caps were right underneath it – check.  Pushing a cart with a 9 month old strapped to the front of you and a four-year old trying to hold a 10-foot long vinyl gutter – not possible.

Step Two: Cut Gutter. So I asked the wood people if they would cut the gutter for me, “no can do Mam”.  Then I am directed to a self cut station.  With one petite in the cart the other strapped to me, I think yep, I’ve totally got this.  Yeah nope.  Luckily for me a nice man happened to walk by and saw me trying to saw a vinyl gutter with a nine-month-old strapped to the front of me.  He took pity on me and cut it for me.  The younger me, would have been mortified that I couldn’t do it all, that as a woman I would need help from a man.  However, now, I must admit I am very fond of my petites fingers that I said heck yeah, cut this gutter please and thank you.

Step Three: Find parts to hook it to fence.  Now for a way to get it to hook into the fence without doing any damage.  Here was the sort of laughable part, everyone is so friendly and really wants to help you find what you’re looking for.  Lucky for me, when I described how I wanted to craftily put the gutter garden to the fence the employees were able to direct me to all the parts I needed.

Step Four: Pay for ALL the items.  I decided to check out at self check and pay for all the items or so I thought.  Until a slightly terse lady notified me that in fact I had not paid for all of the items; that one of the petites had been sitting on some of them and I did indeed need to pay for them.  Fabulous.  I left being slightly embarrassed, but with all of the parts needed to make my awesome gutter garden.  (Another location that may or may not have a picture of me and the petites in some backroom – see my post on our art museum trip)

So here is what everything looked like.  As you can see it’s craftily put together and for us that is just fine, it is holding dirt and water successfully and as you can see the fence is still standing.  Yay!  There are much better tutorials out there about making real gutter gardens.  For example here and here.

With that said, if you rent too and want some craftily put together gutter gardens here are the steps:

1. buy one vinyl gutter, 6 gutter end caps, 14 feet chain (I chose 16lbs. chain), 4 very large washers, 1.5 inches in diameter, some wire(I used old wire from IKEA picture frames), zip ties.
2. cut gutters into three sections
3. put end caps onto gutters – they just push on
4. drill holes all through gutter for drainage
5. drill holes into gutter walls to hook chain
6. use zip ties to hold chain and gutter together
7. measure out how far you want gutters to hang apart, if they are slightly crooked it isn’t a big deal, it’s better for drainage
8. hook wire to top of chain apex and then attach washer twist it together to hold tight
9. repeat steps for single gutter that is left (more than two gutters would be too heavy with water and soil and plants)

I will post more pictures once the plants start growing.  The petite has been telling everyone she wants to grow salad, so that is what we will grow in the gutters.

Happy gardening,

E