YOUR YARD COULD BE THE TOAST OF THE TOWN
By Greg Nolan, Colorado Master Gardener and Native Plant Master,Pueblo County, Colorado.
Posted by Linda McMulkin, CSU Extension-Pueblo County.
Every year, tons and tons of glass bottles are put into our landfills. In places like the arid southwest, those bottles may last thousands of years. Chances are you just might be a wine drinker; chances are you throw your wine bottles into the trash. Chances are an archeologist a thousand years from now will determine that you drank too much. Well, we can mess with the minds of the archeologist of the future.
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| A local gardener has been adding bottle trees for color in his new landscape. Wine trees grow faster than pinon pine. |
Start recycling your bottles into yard art. You can make wire trees and adorn the branches with wine bottles. You can take dead trees and adorn the branches with wine bottles; heck, you can even incorporate wine bottles into your living trees to add color. How about a wine bottle holiday tree? When people ask where you got your wine, you can simply say; from that tree over yonder.
You can incorporate wine bottles into the paths of your yard. Simply partially bury the wine bottle, mouth down. Using this method you can line the paths and gardens of your yard with wine bottles. This adds definition and character to your garden. If you want to get more ambitious, using the same method you can make an entire path out of wine bottles. If you are really ambitious, you can encase the bottles in concrete for a more permanent path. These paths add great color and interest to your yard. Use your imagination.
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| This short wooden fence on a corner lot became more private by additional height. And it catches the sun in the late afternoon, adding flashes of color! |
How about adding color to a chain-link fence? This can be a great backdrop for a young shrub border or the vegetable garden. Or increase the privacy of your four-foot wooden or picket fence by adding some tall support posts and attach chicken wire and multi-colored bottles.
If you want something to cool all the wine you will be drinking, consider removing a slat from your deck and suspending a piece of home guttering in its place. You can fill the gutter with ice and add your wine bottles.
Perhaps the best part of any wine bottle yard adventure is the planning. For this you will need a warm summer evening, a bottle of cold rose, something light to eat, a significant other, a comfortable seat in your yard, and a dream.