Last spring, I bought a spring color bowl (a pot that was pre-planted with spring bulbs and primroses) from the garden center, to place on a table just outside the bedroom window. It brought me a lot of joy in the early spring weeks.
I had planned on buying another one for this year. I thought again, then decided to raid my garden. I "borrowed" some daffodils, tulips, grape hyacinths, hyacinth, and some primroses from my yard and put together my own color bowl, using a pot and soil that I already had. When my flowers are done blooming, I plan on returning the bulbs and plants to the garden and finding something else to put in these pots.
Anyway, the other day, it took me about 30 minutes to dig and pot, and it will take another 15 minutes to put all of the plants back. So, forty-five minutes of work for $20 in savings -- that's a pretty good deal. Since I had really planned on buying a color bowl this spring, this is a real savings (as opposed to a theoretical savings).