Hello Lovelies,

We all have stuff laying around our home that just sits there.  Untouched, unmoved, and unloved.  Over the years, I’ve been notorious for placing things around the yard that makes an obstacle course for my husband when he mows the grass.  He was having to edge around these things and it made the job much more tedious.  Trust and believe, I heard it each and every time haha! After much thought, a round of garage organization, and trying to figure out a way to tackle this problem, I had an idea!!!

The idea was to make a separate and unique space.  I have a small yard unfortunately as we live, right now, in an HOA.  Ugh!  Not ideal, but hey this is only temporary.  Seeming this is temporary, we are unable to make drastic changes.  So I came up with a DIY project that was pretty much FREE!  We had spare wooden boards in our garage.  No idea on where it came from, but we had numerous long boards just sitting there perched against the corner.

The Plan:

There were two corners to play with.  They are at the far ends of the yard.  One gets full sun from early morning to maybe mid-day.  The other is shaded in the early morning and full sun mid-day to sunset.  In Texas, the hottest part of the day is late mid-day.  So this made it much easier to choose a corner to build my garden.  This space would prevent plants from burning and that corner already had a sun shade due to our Hibiscus trees needing some protection from the Texan sun. Some of the potted plants already had sun damage so this project was long overdue.  I took a few boards and wiped them clean, wiping off cob webs and debris.  I found this was easier with the paint brush I was about to use.  I set up my patio chairs next to each other so I could paint and not have to stoop over.  Taking spare paint, I painted the boards a dark chocolate brown.  TIP: Any paint will do.  Interior, exterior, new, or old.  This chocolate paint is at least 10 years old.  The garden won’t care I promise!

Before

These boards were then placed across the corner, sectioning off the corner completely.  I hammered two small nails at the bottom of the fence on each side to act as an insert so the boards did not move that much and they would stay upright.

I had medium sized rocks we had pulled from the front beds which I then used to add interest and further keep the boards upright.  Especially in the middle seeming there are two boards together.  Keep in mind this project was free, while i know I could’ve bought a bracket or something to screw them together, this would’ve taken a trip to the store as these were not on hand.

I laid a roll of plastic that was left over from a last minute purchase a few years back when we had to scramble due to a surprise frost.  It was an entire roll of plastic.  I cut it in strips and laid it down to suffocate the grass and any weeds.  This was the base.  It was important to not have weeds or grass showing because this space will be dedicated to pots only.  Nothing will be planted in the ground.  Be sure to cut around any large pots that you are unable to move.  I had two large 20″ super heavy Hibiscus trees I had to do this with.  I used a pair of scissors to sporadically poke small holes around the plastic for drainage as I didn’t want mold or stagnant water to form.

Cedar mulch has always been our go to especially in our front beds.  It helps to repel bugs.  We had two and a half bags leftover from last Summer and this made perfect cover for the bed.  We also got use up what was leftover from a previous project thus freeing an entire corner of the garage.  Major score!

Next, I just gathered all of the pots around the yard, in the ground decor, and Dollar Tree decor finds that were never used or put up.  In the end, this was a fun project taking just a few hours. It sectioned off a space for potted plants and solved the obstacle course problem.  Being frugal can be as simple as re-using, re-purposing, or using up whatever you have that is leftover.  Train yourself to look at a rock, or a piece of wood, or broken dish and see its potential.

Because everything has 9 lives!

After