Up-cycling Wine Barrel Rings into Garden Art
Oh the creative joy of having an abundance of wine barrel rings! A while ago my friends mentioned that their neighbour had a collection of half wine barrels that had rotted so they had a pile of the metal rings. Naturally my eyes lit up and I jumped at the chance to collect them! I love up-cycling and items like this have great potential for artistic re-use.
Having been distracted by other gardening projects and ventures over the past year I finally got back to my pile of collected treasures. Truth be known, it was also time to start clearing some of these treasures to declutter a little bit. So after gathering my drill, the pop riveter, a clamp and an extra pair of hands from my willing father we got to work. Thanks Dad.
In my mind I had plans to make items to both hang and use within my garden beds as individual focal points. As often is the case for my spontaneous creative projects I had no exact plans to build these to. So it was a process of working with the materials and going with the flow and seeing how they all came together. And happily I can report that it was a relatively easy process with results that I am quite content with.
Here are the finished products that we managed to create.
I think this was my favourite one. My existing treasured blue water bowl and glass balls which previously sat in a garden bed now fits snuggly into this sphere. I love the location that it ended up in my garden. Contextually it sits next to a wine barrel with a vintage metal grape picking crate and positioned beneath my shiraz grape vine. So naturally this has become a good spot to sit with a glass of wine and ponder over the garden and the world!
Continuing on with the theme of placing something within the sphere, this sphere was constructed in an informal way. The nest and ceramic eggs are a nice secondary focal point within the sphere which I think adds a deeper element of discovery and intrigue within the garden experience. Of interest is that the nest is actually a recycled element too. It is the roots of an Agave attenuate which had become pot bound so created a great intertwined mass and a pre-made nest!
Here is another one that I placed in the garden amongst the plants as an interesting focal point which also doesn’t dominate or detract from the plants.
These two more evenly constructed spheres are going back to my friends for them to hang in their veranda as a thank you for getting me the rings initially. Here's hoping that they like them as much as I do!! Although I'm sure they will, however I do know where I'll put them in my garden if they don't like them!!
One of my previous projects is a more simplified collection of rings linked together simply with a bolt and nuts to keep each ring evenly spaced. I quite like the more simplified collection of circles and the hanging rusted sphere planted with Echeveria elegans which collectively retains the round theme.
So having completed this little project I’m heading off now to collect some more treasures to up-cycle. I might bump into you out in the hunting fields!! Happy gardening and up-cycling!
