Just about anything -- and everything -- can be recycled into the garden, as Bill Thoma of Ben Avon demonstrates by building walls and an entire pond (below) from discarded curb and coping stones.

Bill Thoma has probably spent far more time than money in assembling his Ben Avon garden.

From the flowers to the veggies to the stone walls, a pattern of recycling and reusing prevails, starting at the front sidewalk and carrying through to the wooded boundary at the far end of his back yard.

Thoma’s garden provides a break from working construction and for Duquesne Light for the past 19 years, although he admits that he hasn’t done much with the front yard since the family moved in.

“It was covered with river stone when we moved here, and I’ve kept it that way, since most of the area is so heavily shaded that grass just won’t grow.”

Although there is no lawn to tend there, some greenery can be found in one section where the sun manages to break through. Tomatoes -- lots of tomatoes -- a few of them planted, most of them volunteers from last season, thrive in a small area amidst the stones. “I put in three of the plants,” Thoma said. “The rest came back on their own. It happens every year.”

The tomato patch extends along the side of the house that picks up maximum exposure to sunlight.

“The stones in the front yard and the bricks along the house hold the heat. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why they grow so well.”

So well that at this time of the summer, a mini-forest of tomatoes -- cherry, Roma, Big Boy -- have grown tall and healthy with little more tending than a heavy application of mushroom manure.

“I know that some people think it’s tacky to plant tomatoes or any vegetables in the front yard, but I said the heck with it! I’ve been growing them for eight years now and nobody’s complained. I have eggplant growing there, too”

The back yard gives Thoma more opportunities to be creative.

“Several years ago, my daughter told me that she wanted a pond for her goldfish,” Thoma said.

He could have settled for a pre-formed bubbler from a garden center, but instead, he drew upon his occupation in construction to make something special. He purchased a three-tier shell, but the rest of the water feature came from cast-off curb stones that once lined some city streets prior to their reconstruction.

Working on the projects, Thoma had access to the stones that “…would have been dumped as clean fill,” he said. “They’re sandstone. They’re beautiful!”

Measuring two feet in width, four feet in length and eight inches thick, movement of the curbs posed a formidable challenge which Thoma solved by splitting them before hauling them home.

And so curbs that originally bordered streets now border an embankment the length of the yard and enclose the pond now covered with water hyacinth and stocked with his daughter’s fish.

Thoma is in the process of constructing a low wall to separate his back property from a narrow wooded ravine. He’s using curb stone, but he points out more decorative stones salvaged from the demolition of a Fifth Avenue building.

“They’re called coping stones,” Thoma said. “They form the top of a wall or building.”

As for the embankment plants, Thoma believes, “Wherever you can plant something, plant it. Sometimes it might take a long time to find the right spot. You just have to work for it.”

Among the perennials that have found their right spots: hostas, tiger lilies, sunflowers, money trees, pachysandra, elephant ears.

“When I was working construction jobs, we sometimes were told to get rid of plants. Often, I brought some of them home.”

Most of what many would categorize as annuals enjoy a long life under Thoma’s care. Containers planted with geraniums and dusty miller winter over in his garage, returning as good as new in the spring, coleus added for extra color.

Bill says that he enjoys everything about gardening except for trimming the yews that line one side of his driveway.

A late morning rain gives him some hope of putting the task off to another day, but with patches of blue sky growing, he prepares to get to work.

“Has to be done sometime,” he says with a resignation special to devoted gardeners.