Making flower beds with improvised means: ideas for the garden

Decoration from natural materials

The most popular materials for creating flower beds are stone and wood. Decorating flower beds with stone has many advantages: such flower beds are durable, do not require maintenance, look natural, spectacular and stylish. In addition, the variety of options for using stone as a decor is simply amazing – every designer is now trying to use this material to create an original landscape.

Decorating flower beds with wild stone requires some investment, but this is the most win-win option – even the simplest flowers look great in such a frame. In decorating flower beds, the following stones are most often used:

• sandstone – a soft rock that is easy to work with, has a diverse palette of warm colors and shades;

• limestone – durable and strong stone with a porous structure, easy to process, color palette – white and pastel colors;

• tuff – a porous rock, is one of the most valuable finishing materials due to its high decorative properties and an extensive color palette – white, all kinds of shades of gray, brick, burgundy;

• basalt is a dense rock of predominantly dark shades, used in landscape design for making sculptures, decorating ponds, paths and flower beds;

• dolomite is a very dense mineral rock, the stones have an original irregular shape, due to which they are widely used in the decoration of various landscape objects;

• slate is a layered rock, the original flat shape and a varied color palette allow the stone to be widely used to decorate various flower beds.

The easiest way to frame a flower bed with your own hands with a stone is to mark the borders of the flower garden with large natural stones. Small pebbles or stone chips can fill the gaps between flowers, painted small stones will serve not only as mulching material, but also as an original decoration of the garden or country house. With the help of slate, you can equip unusual multi-tiered flower beds with your own hands. The layered structure of the material allows you to create cascading structures that mimic natural rocks. Ampelous and weaving flowers in such flower beds look simply magical. Of large stones, it is good to equip alpine slides, rockeries.

No less popular finishing material is wood. For the arrangement of the flower garden, you can use any remnants of wood: dry logs, branches, stumps, boards, pegs, sawdust. These materials can be used in the following ways:

• in a large log or stump, you can cut a recess into which to fill the soil and plant flowering plants;

• from a vine or ordinary thin branches, you can weave a wattle fence – a very stylish decorative hedge for fencing a flower bed;

• small boards, pegs and logs can become an original frame for a flower garden;

• colored sawdust and chips are poured into the aisles and between plants – sawdust is not only a decorative element, but also a good mulching agent.

Video “Beautiful and unusual ideas for creating and decorating flower beds”

Demonstrative video with useful recommendations for creating and designing a flower garden.

The use of improvised means

You can also arrange flower beds in the country with your own hands using improvised materials and tools. The following items are suitable as a fence for a flower garden:

• plastic and glass bottles (plastic containers are preferable, as they are easy to cut, paint, bend) – bottles can be used as borders for flower beds, as well as a container for planting;

• car tires – halves of brightly painted tires will serve as an original fence for flower beds, and a whole tire – a full-fledged flower bed;

• old vinyl records or unnecessary discs – some summer residents used these improvised means to frame their flower beds – objects half-embedded in the ground turned out to be an original border for a flower bed;

• cracked dishes – beaten or cracked plates can be used as a fence for flowers, by analogy with plates;

• umbrellas – from an old umbrella it is easy to create a real design masterpiece with your own hands, if you lay it on the lawn with the inside, pour soil, plant flowers, and paint the umbrella itself in bright colors – it seems that in an accidentally lost umbrella it sprouted and blossomed from the ground over time real garden;

• troughs, baskets, suitcases, bags, basins, buckets, watering cans, cups – from these improvised means you can organize full-fledged miniature flower beds or whole flower arrangements in the country with your own hands.

Other design options

In principle, almost everything that can be found on the farm is suitable for creating a flower bed in the country. If desired, the most ordinary household item can be turned into original flower beds with your own hands, which will become a real decoration of the territory near the house. 

Some resourceful summer residents manage to transform the most unexpected things and objects into flower oases:

• faulty household appliances – now you can often find flower beds in the country, arranged in the oven or on the surface of an old gas stove, TV, or a speaker from a music center;

• plumbing: old bathtubs, toilet bowls, sinks, drain cisterns – from such improvised means you can build not only colorful flower beds, but also small ponds (metal bathtubs are used for the reservoir);

• old furniture: cabinets, chests of drawers, beds, chairs, benches – you can also create original flower beds from these improvised items if you pour soil, for example, into drawers of a chest of drawers or a closet, and plant plants there;

• old vehicles: cars, bicycles, carts, boats – decorating flower beds with such improvised means can be considered the most original solution of all created by oneself – a floating boat with flowers, a car made of flowers, or a truck carrying a flower garden look not only original, but magically.

To create a vertical flower bed, you can use the following improvised items: metal frames, parts of reinforcement, the remaining pieces of ribbed mesh, backs from metal beds – these items, dug into the ground, will serve as an excellent support for climbing and ampelous plants.

Useful Tips

Making flower beds with improvised means is not only a fascinating process, but also a very responsible one, since when creating flower beds with your own hands, you need to take into account many points:

• for normal plant growth, air must circulate in the soil, therefore, to arrange a flower garden, choose containers made of breathable materials and give preference to natural finishing methods;

• at the bottom of any container not intended for growing flowers, it is necessary to lay a layer of drainage – otherwise the moisture will stagnate, and the plants will hurt and rot;

• when creating flower beds with your own hands, you need to pay attention to the location of plants and colors – randomly planted multi-colored flower beds do not look aesthetically pleasing and illogical;

• it is better to bring small containers into the room for the winter period – this way they will retain their appearance longer;

• metal containers for flower beds must be pre-treated with special anti-corrosion substances, wood – with antiseptics;

Making beautiful flower beds with improvised means implies an original and high-quality finish of the source material. Do not be too lazy to wash, clean and polish the containers intended for future flower beds well.

Video “A selection of original ideas”

Video compilation of original ideas using improvised materials.