Recycling Junk Into Your Garden Decor
Are You Creative Enough to Use Trash as Art?
They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure, and that is exactly what "garden junk" is all about. "Garden junking" is using items you would normally send to the dump as decor in your garden. Anything can become garden art or decoration, including old bowling balls, shoes, and even bed frames.
Garden Junk Art Online
People who use garden junk think of it as an art form. There are entire sites online dedicated to garden junk and how to turn whatever you're throwing away into garden art. Officianados of this type of art even pick up trash from roadside piles for use in their gardens, and post "wanted" junk items on sites like Craigslist and Gardenweb. Gardenweb even has its own Garden Junk forum.
What Can You Use as Garden Junk?
Do you have an old wicker shelf that has seen its better days? They make great trellises for vining plants. Of course, while the wicker will eventually rot away and decompose, the wooden frame will stand tall for quite a while. Trellises can also be made from things such as old futon frames, taken apart and stood on end.
You might not believe it, but you can make a very cute table from a wooden pallet and a couple of 4x4's. Old bed frames can be pretty easily made into garden benches, or even stood upright as the head and foot of a true "garden bed".
What to do with those old garden tools that are broken or rusted? Lean them up against trees and around your garden beds, like they were just left there. Stand an old hoe upright, top with an old garden hat, and grow a vining plant up it. When people ask about them, you can say "Yes, it outlived it's useful life, so now it's garden art."
Old chairs can be recycled as places to hold potted plants. Sitting next to that chair, you might want to put a pair of your old cowboy boots with something growing out of them.
Have a lot of broken terracotta pots? Turn them on their side, broken side down, and grow a plant to look like it's growing out of a pot that's just fallen over. You'll get a lot of comments on that one. If you're creative enough, you can have a whole bed full of them, creating the appearance of something that was blown over in a windstorm and just never made right.
Of course, we can't forget the most popular junk item used in garden decor, and that's the bowling ball. Some old bowling balls get painted with reflective paint and used as gazing balls, while some have mirrors and beads glued all over them and become distinctive decorative items.
Use Your Imagination to Create Garden Junk Art
The possibilities are endless, especially for those with some carpentry or do-it-yourself skills. The main thing is knowing how and where to place your garden junk so that it looks creative, and not just trashy. If you have an artistic friend, you might ask their help with that.
We need to recycle and reuse as much as we can, so it only makes sense to do it in our gardens. Check out "garden junking" today, and find new uses for old stuff in your garden.
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