(Photography: Brent Wilson, project: Josh Culpan)
Do you love to rummage through council clean-up? Do you visit your local tip or resource recovery centre for free and cheap materials to repurpose in your garden? If you answered yes and you’re looking to create an upcycled garden – you’re part of a trend for re-using and re-imagining what’s been discarded in the past, giving otherwise unwanted pieces a new home. Plus, adding quirky and often free elements to your garden will leave you with more cash to splash out on beautiful plants.
Here are 8 upcycled pieces to inspire you for your garden upcycling journey!
Upcycled planter pots
Reclaim an old galvanised turbine and modify the blades to create this edgy, one-of-a-kind planter that still retains its illusion of motion. Hold the potting mix together by wrapping it in hessian sacking.
Sprinkler Sculptures
Add new life to vintage sprinklers and their perished rubber hoses to create an octopus-like sculpture in your garden. Bent reinforcing bars inside the hoses help form the curves.
Chicken feeder wall art
Turn an old chicken feeder on its head for living wall art and fill it with succulents, such as hen and chicks sempervivum and creeping sedum.
Birdcage flower garden
Birdcages are no longer a thing – we want our birds to be free! But lovely old ones such as this are a quaint feature if you have small, orange-coloured flowering plants looking for a nest – try paper daisies – that will play off the rusty patina of the frame.
Statement hanging art
And old teak table that has served its time can be reused as the backing for your garden’s coat of arms. Add vintage tools, a redundant trellis and perished hoses and all you need is a fancy title!
Fruit basket hanging plants
You can extend the life of old, woven-wire fruit baskets by lining them with sheet moss, putting in your favourite annuals and hanging them up with twine. An old bracket adds an ageless touch!
Bucket portable garden
Drill drainage holes in the base of an old galvanised pail and you get a portable garden. Plant purple verbena as the hero of your mixed mini-bed – it will give you summer-autumn colour for months on end!
Man-made bouquet
A shady spot in your garden often won’t produce the volume of blooms you long to grow in a majestic urn. Create a giant bouquet out of small terracotta pots that are cracked, chipped or beginning to disintegrate because they’ve been exposed to frosts.
