A New Life in the Garden - Reusing Outdoors

Spring is here and everyone is outside again working on their yards. Yards and gardens are wonderful places to reuse things when they no longer serve their original purpose. I've become pretty creative when it comes to reusing things outside. There is a fine line between finding unique ways to reuse items in your yard and it looking like a junk pile, but I'd like to think I do it pretty well.

For example, our front yard boasts a hidden reuse item. When I dismantled a mattress I was left with a large matt of jute fiber. I wound up using it as landscaping cloth over my annual bed to keep down the weeds. I cut out holes for the annuals to pop through, and covered the jute with cedar mulch. If you like the idea but don’t have any jute, you can also achieve a similar result with old newsprint or cardboard under the mulch.

In our back yard, we have a lovely water feature but the water used to just spill out of a boring black pond hose. Now the spout for our water fountain is actually an old bamboo vase that had split and no longer served its purpose.  It looks right at home there.

Our vegetable garden hosts various reused items as well. The walkways between rows are made from repurposed rocks that were left in the yard when we purchased the home, as well as wooden planks from a raised garden bed that was taken apart.

One of my favorite garden items to make from reused materials is plant collars. We tend to have a terrible time with cut worms. We invest in a few bedding plants each year, but unless they each get a little collar, the evil cut worms come and nibble them off at soil level like invisible beavers. I reuse plastic food containers and bedding plant pots as plant collars each year.

Those are just a few examples of things I have reused in my yard. It’s not the solution for all of our waste, but it is a fun option for reusing things that may not have any other home. What about you? Have you made creative use out of anything for your yard? Any bathtub gardeners out there?