Wow - I wouldn’t have thought that gutters could hold enough dirt to grow actual vegetables! (though I’ve had little ferns grow in mine) This gutter garden belongs to Cornelia, who posted on Homegrown. This is a great use for salvaged gutters, and I love how it looks against the house. I’d be a bit concerned with dirt/water contact with the siding.
edited 6/29/09 - These gutters belong to Suzanne Forsling - thanks for letting me know, Suzanne!
8 Comments
Brilliant!!!!! Man, I just don’t have enough time for all these cool ideas.
This is great! My brother-in-law grew strawberries in gutters suspended in layers in a greenhouse. It was great because you could get so much more use of the space,
There could also be some issues with metals (zinc, etc.) leaching out of the gutters, but I bet if the paint inside the gutters was intact and you changed out the soil every year, the leaching effects would be minimal.
This would work REALLY well on my south facing back fence, especially for limited depth plants like herbs and leaf lettuce.
most gutters (in the US at least) are seamless anodized aluminum - I wouldn’t worry much about leaching and they ALL have a back wall to keep water off the fascia, so no water/soil would be on the side of the house.
Almost as nice–more so if you were handy–as the ones I’ve seen for sale recently. Although those have a way to channel water from one level to another. We could probably work on this.
That is a GREAT idea! I am always looking for ways to reuse what may already be on hand. I agree that this could be very helpful in a greenhouse too - I’ll have to give this a try!
Sorry, but this is my rain gutters, I am the one that wrote about them in the Juneau Empire. I don’t know who Cornelia is, but this is my house in the photo, and my rain gutter gardens.
Thanks, Suzanne, I’ll update the post.
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