Easy and Out of the Box: 17+ Cheap DIY Garden Ideas

Be it for some refurbishing, completely new garden landscaping or a simple garden upgrade for a wider garden, you don’t need to give off that much bucks for your dream garden to be a reality. Since the motivation is probably there and you already have your eyes set to particular landscaping materials for your garden, it is time to sauce it up with some cheap garden ideas that you could do on your own. 

17 cheap DIY garden ideas

Honestly, your garden idea could be anything. Just remember two things before you create your own. First, consider the vibe you want to project. It could be rustic, classic English cottage, zen, woody, think about what you want your garden to look like a million times before you go for it. Second, consider the space it will occupy and the materials that you will use. 

Refurbished Furniture Garden Ideas

Think twice before tagging those old furniture of yours as trash because they prove to be good planters and refurbished decors for a beautiful rustic garden. 

You can use old cabinets and dressers to make planters for small plants or succulents like this one. 

or a herb garden like this one from thethingsithinkabout.

Or transform broken chairs or worn-out bathtubs into ingenious flower beds. Plant the herbs in the bathtub like these from Garden Betty. 

You may also add some rooting fabric or a garden pot below a broken chair to serve as a flower bed. 

Or make a garden centerpiece with your old small pianos by making them serve as planters for your flower garden like this one. 

Vertical Garden Ideas

This is one of the easiest garden ideas to do since you will just need something for you to have your plants hanging like a recycled shoe organizer, a DIY wood pallet and even excess iron sheets used for gutters. This idea is space-maximizing, makes use of portable flower beds that will shoo critters away. 

Take a look at this recycled shoe organizer from Instructables.  Not only does it make a good minimalist DIY garden idea but it is also good in irrigating your herbs.  

You can also use excess gutters if you have a compact garden or if you want a hanging garden of some sort. You may check this garden idea from Good Home Design. 

You can also make vertical pallet planters from used woods from broken furniture or just excess wood materials in your storehouse. Just paint it with woody varnish or paint for it to look more rustic and with personality like this one from Instructables. 

And since minimalism and portability are good DIY garden ideas, of course you can also use hanging tin cans or hanging plant cans like this one from Hometalk. 

Wood Garden Ideas

Wood materials in gardens are timeless. Out of it, you can make wooden bench planters, simply a garden bench for aesthetics, elevated planters and what not. There is basically a wood element in every garden as it is easy to access and it could be constructed in many ways you seem fit. 

For starters, you can make a two-in-one chest planter where you could put both water plants and regular plants. It is a good fit for zen gardens or those with waterfalls or ponds in it like this one from Family Handy Man. 

You may also go over the top by crafting wooden carts where both big potted plants and small plants could be shed like this idea from Garden Lovers Club. 

But hey, that is not where the wood garden ideas stop because you can also make wood fence planters for your small plants and succulents like this one. 

Or what about some raised plant beds made of layered wood that are wide enough to house at least two to five plants like this one from Savvy Gardening. 

You may also opt for some terraced wood planters to serve as centerpiece for your rustic garden like this one from Earth Easy. 

Recycled bottles garden ideas

Well if you are pretty hard up in accessing materials for your DIY garden, you can always be crafty with plastic bottles. The best use for them would be hanging fence planters but of course, you can go all-out with them in your landscaping. Add paint for color or just as it is if it fits the landscape. 

For hanging fence planters, all you will need are chicken wires and nails for you to have it hanged. You can also make a pyramid-like plant bed out of them or hanging indoor garden as you wish just as these ones from farmfoodfamily. 

Or how about mosaic-like garden beds with plastic bottles as accented borders for your garden landscape. You can form various shapes and images like this one from Lushome.

Conclusion

Garden ideas need not be complicated. For one, it should reflect functionality and of course your personality as an owner. The materials to be used should not be necessarily all-new and high-end too. It depends on your ingenuity and resourcefulness because those are basically the reasons why DIY garden ideas exist in the first place.