Her new DK-published book (£16.99) gives ideas on how to "create your dream garden at a fraction of the cost".
The big messages are that if you spend more time in the garden you can spend less money. Grow from seed or cuttings, and your gardening will be "more engaging and rewarding than driving to the garden centre".
Instagram star Lautenbach "believes in keeping things simple". Hers is a 2020s version of Alys Fowler's 2008 The Thifty Gardener credit crunch bestseller, which popularised skip diving to make projects such as DIY window boxes out of champagne cases.
The Garden Fairy suggests Freecycle, the dump and car boot sales as well as skips to find garden landscaping materials and containers. Bricks from building and landscaping companies' leftover materials are handy to make raised beds, filled with garden waste and soil. Mend the fence and plant climbers on it, use sticks and not bamboo canes, make tin can pots and buy secondhand garden furniture in the winter when it's cheaper.
However, the author does say you could do with a shredder, a mower, a Dutch hoe. a soil miller, secateurs and battery operated hand shears.
The core of the book offers useful step-by-step advice on how to divide plants, propagate, take cuttings and grow from
seed, including using green manure seeds and cultivating meadows.
Buying plants is recommended in some cases. Bare root hedging, AGMs, self-seeders, garden centre reduced section out of season stock and bulbs are ok. Otherwise get plants from friends or use the above techniques to create your own.
But the message is: "Gardening isn’t about randomly buying plants."
