t's probably safe to say that Cheryl Freundt of Franklin Township doesn't have a green thumb. She has two. And judging by the beauty of her many gardens, chances are she's employing the use of eight other green digits as well.

Freundt's yard boasts everything from a large vegetable garden to a tiny fairy garden.And while plants are important, each space is embellished with the unusual. Most of those items have a story to tell as well.Visitors walking up to the front porch of the 1928 brick home will find a rusted tricycle that belonged to her husband, John, nestled among the flowers. Another bike, for an older child, rests in a border near a garage.Freundt likes to recycle interesting items and find new uses for them.After putting new doors on her house that lead to the back porch, she took the old screen door and propped it against an exterior wall in the garden for use as a backdrop to flowers in a back garden.An old piece of picket fence she found in the basement when she and John bought their home in 2007 also serves as a backdrop to a couple of metal gardeners she purchased at a flea market in Slatington.Also found in the basement, an old wooden ladder is set up in her side yard and holds a handmade log birdhouse. And that birdhouse is quite impressive. Freundt made it from logs that remained after a row of pine trees was cut down along the side of their driveway."I saw a picture in Birds & Blooms (magazine). I made it one winter, four years ago," Freundt said. "I thought it was cool. I looked at what they had and added to it."Freundt did the entire project herself, using her husband's tools."I love making stuff," she says. "I'm a crafter."Another "little" project of Freundt's is her fairy garden. Created in an old washtub, it has handmade furniture, as well as some store-bought pieces, like a tiny bakery."I bake cakes, and it just went from there."The idea for the fairy garden also came from an issue of Birds & Blooms."There was an article in it with a fairy garden in an old bird bath. I thought it was so cute, so I put mine together."In addition to the mini fairy furnishings, the tub holds snapdragons, chicks and hens, kalanchoe, and some tiny critters.While Freundt loves to craft, she is also a recycler.Alongside the house you'll find a pair of washtubs on an old stand. Freundt spied the items along the roadway one day, awaiting garbage pickup, and sent her husband out to get them first.Other recycled and repurposed items include rocks from a hundred-year-old church that was undergoing some renovation work, an old hand pump that her husband found on a job site and was given permission to keep, and a pair of her husband's old work boots, which now have a new job as matching flowerpots in a front flower bed tucked beneath a carved wood-look bird bath.The one thing Freundt can't seem to do is tell you her favorite spot in the yard."I like everything," she says. "I like having plants around. I think plants make a home."