  In this paper, we develop a straightforward $C^0$ linear finite element
method for sixth-order elliptic equations. The basic idea is to use gradient
recovery techniques to generate higher-order numerical derivatives from a $C^0$
linear finite element function.
  Both theoretical analysis and numerical experiments show that the proposed
method has the optimal convergence rate under the energy norm. The method
avoids complicated construction of conforming $C^2$ finite element basis or
nonconforming penalty terms and has a low computational cost.
