• It couldn't have hit the newsstands at a better time: Thrifty Gardener, a special publication of Birds & Blooms.

It contains more than 350 money-saving gardening tips, plus lots of advice about creating container gardens and making over your own gardens on a budget. Among the tips: turn your garbage can into a low-cost rain barrell and your own grill into a potting table. And make your large containers lighter by using crushed soda cans at the bottom of the pot for drainage.

I could go on and on. One idea is cuter than the next.

• Some more good tips in Garden Gate: Evelyn Henry of New York suggests using plastic utensils to mark the places in you garden where bulbs are planted. Use clear utensils and they won't show.

And if you haven't got the mature trees in your garden on which birds can perch, reader Norma Berry of California suggests collecting old, long-handled garden tools, like rakes, spades or cultivators, and stick the handle end in the ground around a bird bath or feeder.