Upcycled and Repurposed ~ Building My Garden

in #ecotrain6 years ago

Greetings fellow Steemians. Hope you are all having a wonderful start to the week?

I have a vested interest in leaving as little impact on this planet as possible. I try to follow the 4 R's principles wherever possible, Re-Use, Recycle, Repurpose and Refuse. We produce so much waste on a daily basis, most of it ends up in landfills or dumped in the ocean. Most man-made products take years to biodegrade and I feel really uncomfortable contributing to that.

So I wanted to share some things, that would have otherwise ended up in the trash, which we have found new uses for around our garden.


The hammock that my little dude is chilling in is made from an old net that washed up on the beach. We always try and remove any trash from the beaches when we visit them and this was one of those awesome finds. We tied it to some chain that we had laying around and attached to two of the chestnut trees in my back garden.


This old wheelbarrow had definitely seen better days. The wheel is rusted and doesn't turn anymore and one of the handles has broken off. This was something my hubby found on a trek down to the dump one night when we first moved here. He wanted to build a homemade wind turbine from scraps and used this wheelbarrow for the stuff he collected. He still hasn't built the turbine, but I the wheelbarrow makes a great strawberry planter. I drove some holes in it for drainage using a hammer and screwdriver , added a mix of coconut fiber, compost and topped with straw. Added the strawberries and they seem to be quite happy in there.


Some single use plastic that I use to grow cuttings or seeds in. These are the tomato shoots from my cherry tomatoes! Once they've established some roots I'll plant them out. I'm actually really grateful for these as many of my young plants I grew from seed were trampled and destroyed by the dog when I first planted them outside, and the littlest dude thought it would be ok to try and harvest them before they had grown lol.

This is the bed where the tomatoes are growing. The supports for them are made using old posts that made up part of a protection cage around my veggies last year. The net trellis stuff I salvaged from an old fence panel that fell down in the high winds we had over the winter. Look at all that medicine in the background! Not weeds!


Hubby made this pallet bench a couple of years ago. It's over near our fire pit and we've had many a great evening out there jamming on guitars and singing with our friends.


Our trampoline steps are also made out of old pallets. Our friend crafted these awesome steps when we donated our trampoline for the Sark Roots Festival. (A permaculture festival which I will write about in a future post). They've lasted two years now and have been dragged up and down the island a few times.

This is my make-shift compost bin. I used some more of those posts as I did with the tomato trellis. Wrapped some chicken wire, which was sitting in my garden shed, around and made use of the leftover weed suppressant membrane to keep it all in. For the front piece I broke up another pallet and used some more of those posts to hold it in place. if you're wondering what we did with the rest of the pallet...

We used them to edge this bed for the cucumbers, of course. This is still a work in progress and I might join the bits of wood together, but for now I am happy with it.


Yes that is a rug in the garden. It is what helped clear the grass and weeds for the bed above. We've now moved it over to another spot in the garden so we can start another no-dig bed.


This is another strawberry patch we created using the frame from the kid's old wading/ paddling pool. I lined it with another old rug that had succumbed to the destruction of a family of 6. Unfortunately the couch grass was already attached to the strawberries that were given to us so it's a bit of daily maintenance keeping it at bay.

This bed is made from an old window frame that a friend of mine no longer needed. It was laying around her garden along with some other bits so I thought I would see how using it as a raised bed could turn out. The slatted support for the french beans came from an old wardrobe that had seen better days.


This is another one of those window frames. Hubby dug a hole and set it on top. It's covered with some perspex that we discovered in th shed when we first moved here. It makes a great little cold frame although we haven't needed to use it this year so far.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. If you liked it please help support me with an upvote, comment or resteem. Follow me @holisticmom. I am grateful to be part of the @ecotrain community. If you haven't already seen the quality content from all those involved I highly recommend checking it out. One love everyone. <3

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This is an awesome post! :) I suddenly feel to run out and photograph the old beer bottles that the former inhabitant of our Thai house carefully collected and turned into garden borders - haha - only it's dark and I broke 2 already while I was digging this week. Some cool ideas here! Enjoying to follow you from Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. :)

Aww thank you! Ha ha I'm glad to have inspired you. I'd love to see what you will create with those old beer bottles! Although the garden border idea sounds fab too. :-) I'd love to visit Thailand one day it's such a beautiful place and I regret that I never traveled there when I lived in Singapore. Thanks again for your kind words and I'm glad you enjoyed the post. :-) <3

Very nice uses - I brought a lot of random materials from my old house to out here at the property because I knew they would have some use eventually - a lot of it has already. That hammock is my favorite from your collection of repurposes :)

Thank you. That's great to hear that you also repurpose things. I find it really enjoyable making old into new and very rewarding also. Haha and thanks yes we get a lot of use out of the hammock. It swings really well too. 😊

I just read the introduction of your post and its really inspiring i felt i leave you this comment to let you know that i am coming back to read this post and share my happy thoughts about what you do. I am for a training please i will back to this post asap!

Thank you for your kind words @thegreens. I'm glad you were able to find some inspiration from it. :-)

Good job on the 4 R's and the upcycling! Love the pallet bench and the strawberry "planter." :-)

Thank you for the compliment :-) I'm glad you like the bench and strawberry wheelbarrow. ha ha, hoping for some fruit anytime soon. x

How fab... really love your pallet furniture!!! Pallets have to be one of the most useful things known to man!!

Aww thank you so much! We are hoping to build more this year. I visited a friend's greenhouse yesterday and he had built a kids play area inside it. Pallet climbing frame/ jungle gym with a slide attached so now I am feeling inspired to do the same for my littles as they had loads of fun on it.

Aww thank you so much! We are hoping to build more this year. I visited a friend's greenhouse yesterday and he had built a kids play area inside it. Pallet climbing frame/ jungle gym with a slide attached so now I am feeling inspired to do the same for my littles as they had loads of fun on it.

Oh gosh you just reminded me!! I build one for my son once... years ago.. out of pallets, in a tree! I painted it purple and green out of gifted paint.

Oh wow that's awesome! 😊😊😊

I will have to see if i can find the photo... it's only on film I think...must digitize my old negs if I can find them!!

That would be great to see. I'd love to see a post about it. Maybe some helpful diy hints too 😊 xx

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