If, like me, you’re still biding your time before gardening season begins then also, like me, you may be going slowly stir crazy. A good sign this is happening is when you start casting your eye over stuff around the house and considering what could be pressed into service as a plant container or a garden sculpture. With enough creativity, just about anything has the potential. I’ve seen everything from a typewriter to a toilet accenting a flower bed and I’ve come to the conclusion that, a lot of these decisions are probably spur of the moment but the truly crazy choices must surely have percolated after endless days cooped up indoors.

A teapot and metal dish are repurposed as a bird bath in a rural garden in south central Ontario.

Kitchens, of course, are absolutely full of potential plant containers and not just teacups and teapots (although they’re so charming as garden decor).

• Old sinks are popular as large containers and as rinse stations when sunk into the work surface of a potting table.
• Kitchen tables and chairs work for outdoor entertaining as well as plant displays.
• Baking trays make great surfaces for keeping things tidy when repotting.
• A fry pan or skillet makes a great drip tray.
• A collection of cutlery can be hung to make a wind chime or a bird scare in the veg patch.

Left to right: A colander, a teapot and a funnel enjoy a second life as hanging planters.

Copper jelly molds provide interest and a little colour on a lattice garden arch.

Entertaining ideas with wine and candles

This is my old metal food grater, now protecting a candle for a little romantic lighting on the deck.

Wine and candlelight are, of course, wonderful elements for upping the romance of any situation including the garden.

Candles flickering from glass votives are a classic patio accessory. I love my old metal food grater. It works just as well as any fancy candle sleeve or lamp and throws spangles of candlelight all over our outdoor deck once night falls. Chandeliers, as seen in the photo below, have a soft spot in my heart as garden decor, too.

And wine? Sipping a glass or two is all a part of enjoying a garden in my opinion. But the wine (or liquor) bottle itself has such potential:

• Stick them over support sticks to protect eyes from being poked.
• Stick them over the lopped off branches of live trees for the same reason.
• Push a bunch of them, side by side, into the ground to make a sparkly edging to a garden bed.
• Make a water feature out of them.
• Build an entire garden shed out of them.

Go bigger (and odder)

An iron bed frame (above left) and bedstead (above right) in gardens in Ontario.

My guy once had a vintage Army jeep that was basically rotting away at the edge of our woodland garden at the cottage in Ontario. I was less than thrilled with the look of it and threatened to plant up the entire vehicle with flowers and trailing vines. I think it could’ve looked pretty good, actually. But he had it towed before I could carry out my threat.

Turning a big home item into garden art isn’t a new idea, of course. It’s just an idea that’s a bit hard to pull off. Crucially, you need to get that big item placed in the right spot in the garden. But people somehow manage!

• Bathtubs make great raised beds.
• The perforated metal drum from the inside of an old washing machine makes an ideal container for an outdoor fire, keeping the wood neatly stacked and the flames aerated but protected from strong breezes.
• Metal bed frames work well framing, you guessed it, a flower bed.
• I once used an old fireplace screen, complete with metal mesh curtains, as a garden sculpture that also functioned as a transparent blockade, stopping our big Golden Retriever from marching through a flower bed. It worked and looked good, too!
• Bedroom dressers, with their drawers pulled out just so and planted up, make a great tiered display of flowers (especially the trailing variety).
• And why not turn an old piano into a water feature?

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Glass is probably not the most practical material for an outdoor garden feature but if you want a touch of elegance in the garden, it can look terrific! These two bird baths, below, are a lovely example. You’d have to bring them indoors once the snow starts to fly but that extra bit of effort is worth it.

Stacked glass plates, trays and vases make elegant bird baths, seen on a garden tour in Gananoque, Ontario.

• You can mimic old fashioned glass cloches by using old vases, too.
• A small glass dish, sunk into the ground, can make a tiny oasis for frogs, thirsty insects and birds.
• I’ve seen blown glass Christmas tree ornaments hung from tree branches to simply catch the light and look wonderful year round.

Then, again, sometimes you want to recycle and, importantly, blow the world a raspberry at the same time. This is where the art of introducing really silly stuff into the garden comes into play:

• Using boots, shoes and purses as planters.
• Using an old wool sweater to line a wire hanging basket instead of traditional moss or coconut fibre.
• Using an old broom as the start of a scarecrow–the bristles make a good imitation of a character’s hair-standing-on-end brush cut.

What to avoid

Is there anything off limits? Actually, there is. Some items just aren’t healthy options.

• Although they’re often recommended as easy to use raised bed frames, old rubber tires are not a great choice. True, any toxic leaching into the soil and water that could be accessed by growing vegetable plants takes too long to make a difference to the safety of the edible crop. But tires do decompose and they will, over time, leach toxic chemicals into the ground where they are placed.
• Paint cans got a lot of hype on social media as alternative plant containers because of their bright splashes of colour (dripped paint) on their edges and sides that added to the fun appeal. But, again, the chemicals in a paint can (even a thoroughly cleaned out can) may not affect the annual planted in it but could, over time, affect the soil around it.
• Furniture with lead-based paint is also not a good choice if you’re thinking it will be a permanent fixture in your garden.
• A large mirror in a garden can be a dangerous wildlife hazard. Set into an antique window frame and hung on a hedge or filling a trellised archway, a mirror is a neat piece of fool-the-eye garden decor but the problem is that it tends to fool birds’ eyes, too. We need to keep bird strike down as much as possible.

What’s your weirdest, wildest plucked-from-your-home piece of garden decor?