Luxury gardens are gorgeous, with their perfectly manicured beds of exotic florals and their deluxe garden furniture. Unfortunately, we don’t all have the budget for solid oak benches and blooms imported from Asia, but that doesn’t mean your garden can’t look just as great, albeit in a slightly kooky way.
Here are 6 DIY projects to turn old household objects into unique and eye-catching garden features that will make your lawn the talk of the town, whether you’re a DIY disaster or a DIY master…
Image: Pierrevedel.com
Wooden Pallets (Difficulty: DIY Master)
If you have any wooden pallets lying around, they make fantastic garden tables. Depending on the size table that you want, you might need two or four pallets.
Sand them down thoroughly (no nasty splinters allowed!), treat the wood with a special outdoor furniture oil, nail the pallets together and add some legs – you could even use old furniture legs from a table or dresser you’re about to throw away!
Image: SocialWicker
Mirror (Difficulty: DIY Disaster)
Got a gorgeous old mirror that doesn’t match your new decor, but you just can’t bear to let it go? Pop it outside!
Hang the mirror against a wall and let nearby wall-climbing plants grow around the edges (you might need to trim them back once a year or so, so they don’t cover it completely). It holds a lovely Secret Garden appeal and it has the added benefit of making a small yard seem larger.
Image: Tobyotter
Wine Bottles (Difficulty: DIY Lover)
Build yourself a unique flowerbed with a collection of vintage (or just cheap) wine bottles instead of boring bricks and stones!
Take the labels off with some rubbing alcohol (they’ll only come off in the rain anyway) and fill the bottles with small pebbles. Then dig out a circle or a semi-circle patch of grass a good three to five inches deep and line the edges with your bottles.
Now fill the centre with peat and get planting!
Image: Alexandre Dulaunoy
Kebab Skewers (Difficulty: DIY Disaster)
This one works just as well with old tent pegs too. If you’re always forgetting which plant is which create your own garden-centre style placards!
All you need to do is laminate some small rectangles of card with the name of each plant, tie them securely to the looped end of the skewer/peg and push into the ground, it couldn’t be easier!
Image: _Libby_
Glass Jars (Difficulty: DIY Lover)
Create a magical wonderland garden with nothing more than some old, glass jars and a string of fairy lights.
Drill a hole on either side of the jar, near the rim, and thread some good quality string through. Tie them to your tree branches and thread outdoor fairy lights through the branches too, with a small bunch of them inside each jar.
When lit up at night time, the lights in the trees will sparkle like mini stars, and the ones in the jars will create a warmer glow that’s perfect for romantic midnight dinners on the patio!
Image: Hammer51012
Bedstead (Difficulty: DIY Master)
Turn an old kid’s bed (or even an adult one, although a double might be a bit over the top!) into a funky flowerbed that none of your neighbours will have.
Take the headboard off and saw across the frame around 2 feet from the foot of the bed.
Discard the big chunk of bed in the middle and nail the remaining piece onto the headboard, like you’re making a super short bed.
Now lay wooden planks across the ‘bed’ lengthways and nail short, vertical planks to either side to create a long, rectangular basket and voilà, you have a very unique wooden garden furniture flowerbed just waiting for things to be planted in it!
These are just some of the ways you can recycle household objects into amazing new garden features; the only limit is your imagination!
Do you have any ideas of your own?
Estelle Page is an interior designer and gardening addict who blogs for Capital Gardens. She loves to come up with unique and creative decor ideas, either inside the house or out in the garden!