Pot Plant Waterer

Going on holiday? Or just a bit slack at remembering to water your plants? Take an empty beer bottle and fill it with tepid water, then bury it neck down in the soil next to your plant. The water will slowly drain through, keeping the soil moist and your plant healthy. If you want it to be a long-term feature, you could write the name of the plant on the side of the bottle, either with a sharpie or using a lable maker – make sure it’s decorative to give visual appeal.

Make a vase

Elegant, tall, wine bottles make lovely candle holders as a table centre piece; but beer bottles … not so much. They can make great little vases for small garden posies though. Clean your bottle and use spray paint to cover it in one block of colour. If you want a more interesting design, use painters tape to mask out an area and create a pattern. Friends coming over and no time to watch the paint dry? Grab a paper doily and tie it around the bottle with some twine, or wrap the bottle in a long ribbon. If it has a particularly interesting label you could just use complementary colours of flowers and leave it as it is.

Hundertwasser style garden border

A real garden talking point, and a great way of using up bottles of different sizes and colour, is to make a garden border. For beds that are level with your garden, dig a series of small holes and bury the bottles bottom up – leave a few centimetres clear of the dirt so the sun catches them. For raised beds, you can stack the bottles on top of each other with the bottoms facing out. Use a little bit of superglue to stick them together, or pack them into the raised dirt.