Rustic Crafts from a Xeric Garden

Using Nature's Gifts
to Make Unique Crafts and Art

You can find the most amazing things to use as unique and funky accents in your garden, like old gnarled stumps and weather-beaten driftwood roots made into root planters.

Planted with a special collection of Jovibarba, the other Hens and Chicks plant, they are exquisite. Keep your eyes open for finds like these!

Whether cleaning up in your xeric garden or walking around your neighborhood, seek out items to use in your rustic crafts. Look out for rustic salvage to make garden art.

Remember to ask permission if there are items you want in someone’s yard.

Here Are Some Ideas for your Rustic Crafts:

I’ve used the stumps from trees cleared to make room for a vegetable garden and greenhouse to make a stump fence.

This makes a great wildlife habitat, as well as being a unique boundary marker. A wire fence above this makes it almost impossible for neighborhood dogs and deer to visit.

A twig fence made from twigs collected from your garden or roadside tree prunings is a great project to beautify your garden, and keep out uninvited visitors.

I try and match the project to the twigs – let the trimmings tell you how to use them. See how to build a twig fence here.

Add a rustic archway to your twig fence and entwine Clematis or grapevines around it to create a unique entryway.

Embellishing barnboard nest boxes and other barnboard crafts, bird feeders, wreaths and twig furniture and gates are some of the ways you can use twigs and seedpods.

I find twisted and contorted twigs to make handles for twig handled trugs and gates, or making a plain door or gate more interesting with pieces of twigs cut to make a pattern.

Plastic ones can be painted with special rust paint to look vintage.

I use them to protect seedlings from squirrels or birds in my garden, or just to display as garden art. Sometimes they need a new handle, so I wire a twig onto them.

Sometimes a certain special twig has to wait for just the right project before you use it. I just keep adding to my collection of twigs so I have a good selection to choose from.

I collect anything made of wire and accent it with twigs, bark or grapevines to make planters or gates.

Thinking outside the box can inspire you to find uses for many things you might have overlooked, such as parts from a metal couch to use for a gate, woven with grapevines or slender twigs.

Keep your eyes open at flea markets or the recycle center for glass balls from light fixtures to put on top of twig obelisks, and other salvaged light fixtures to make into rustic salvaged art.

Salvaging items from the waste stream, especially those that aren't commonly recycled can provide some interesting crafts such as a Styrofoam trough made out of a cooler or shipping box. There's a reason my new motto is 'Trash to Treasure'.

I make rustic tin can planters, which I plant with Sedum and Sempervivum for some really fun Tin Can Succulents. Take some clean food cans, throw them on the fire to make them go rusty, and find a weathered barnboard to attach them to.

I nail the cans on to the board, find a twisty twig handle, and plant with a wide variety of hardy succulents.

Display them where they’re out of the full sun as the metal will get hot and burn the roots.

Seek out rusty chains and those old fashioned and out of style fluted glass light fixtures to make into rain chains, even old damaged baskets to use for hypertufa molds.

Barn board or old weathered shingles, well aged siding or other wood can be used to make interesting barnboard crafts such as planters, window boxes, a potting bench, barnboard hook board or funky rustic signs.

Make barnboard nest boxes from weathered boards to invite birds to make their home in your xeric garden.

go to Drought Smart Plants home page

Xeric Gardens

Twig Craft Techniques

Tools for Twig Craft