YELLOW TICKET GARDEN

Everyone loves a bargain.  The mere sight of words such as ‘clearance’, ‘reduced’ or ‘marked down’ is enough to reduce me to a salivating middle aged heap of wobbliness, usually preceding the desire to spend, spend, spend! 

Managers discount - buy me

Yellow ticket gardening is now following hot on the heels of yellow ticket dinners.  What is this yellow ticket rubbish she’s blathering on about?  Well for those of you out there not familiar with this concept – ‘yellow ticket’ is the term applied in our household to anything heavily discounted by retailers as many of them use a yellow coloured price sticker to indicate a price reduction.

I love yellow ticket dinners

Imagine being a magpie in Tesco.  I realise this might be quite hard to do as birds are rarely seen hanging out in the fresh produce aisles but stick with me on this one.  Imagine being a magpie whose black beady eyes are on the lookout for any bits n bobs it can take back to its nest.  How does it spot these?  Well my guess is that it looks for anything shiny or glinting in the sunlight, some kind of sign (such as a yellow ticket) that gives away the location of a potentially fabulous treasure it can swoop down and nab. 

Magpies such as me use the same technique to spy out a bargain.  When shopping, my eyes rapidly skim the shelves of retail emporiums hoping to get a glimpse of a bright, shiny yellow ticket that I can swoop down on to get a fabulous saving.  This technique can be applied anywhere though success is not always guaranteed.

Saturday should have been designated National Yellow Ticket Day as there were bargains galore.  I couldn’t open my purse quick enough in some shops.  Scoops of the day included:

Chocolate bunnies discounted to 15p each.  There’s always quite a long sell by date on chocolate and these will make perfect prizes for our summer fundraising.

Bunnies are not just for Easter

Nutty snack packs discounted to 20p each, a perfect healthy option for next week’s lunch boxes.

Reduced!  Go nuts

Seeds discounted to 50p and not expiring until 2022, they’re even cheaper than Wilko.

Little discounts grow into big savings

And so the list goes on and on but the best bargains to be had were in the garden centres where I managed to pick up a whole range of lovely flowering plants at a fraction of the price.  This deck planter was filled with a great selection of items, 50p for pots of African daisies, 65p for pots of violas and £1 for pots of dianthus or pulsatilla. What’s more, I was able to use points from customer rewards schemes on top thus getting double the discount and my purchases for next to nothing. 

Garden centre plant bargains

Neglected planter on the deck

Yellow ticket transformation cost £7

Only 65p for a lovely pot of pansies

It pays to be a savvy shopper as looking after the pennies soon adds up to lots of pounds which can then be spent on treats or used to offset the cost of gardening projects. 

You can do it if you B&Q it

Price reduced poppies growing nicely in the borders

Remember, the golden yellow ticket rule is to only buy that which you actually need or were going to buy/use anyway so that you are not suckered into spending any extra money.  Happy shopping!