A Greener Option: Recycled Pallet Border

On our days off, Jason and I spend the majority of our time working on the yard. Last time I posted about the yard, we had chipped all of our brush and had used it as mulch for our new rose garden. We still had pieces of extra board left over, so Jason came up with a great idea today: making a border out of used boards. Of course, since we didn’t have enough boards we took some beat-up pallets from work (the ones that weren’t complete to be re-used) so we can continue our border throughout the yard.

It took over a few hours just to do the main corner, but it was well worth it! We are so excited to have come up a green, recycled way to make garden edging.

Hopefully we can get enough used boards so we can finish the edging around the porch, too. While Jason was hard at work making the channel for the boards, I started working on adding mulch around the plants surrounding our porch. Our neighbor had been kind enough to drop off a truckload of free mulch last night so I was excited to use it!

The hostas that line the back end of our porch look so much nicer with a clean line dividing the grass and the mulch. I even included the tree because it was so close, and I may even widen it to make a small flower bed.

Remember when I posted about buying these Ikea aluminum planters back in December? I finally found a use for them. I had two extra rose bushes that I had no idea where to plant. So, for now their new home is inside the aluminum planters hugging our hand-made work bench.

Jason and I love using the bench. It holds all of our small hand tools, the outdoor dog bed, bug spray, garden gloves, extra seed packets, and more! Our neighbor Bill built it for us over the winter and we couldn’t be more pleased. He took extra time to make sure it was water proof, and we are glad he did!

I also created a small vegetable garden by replanting two of our new azaela bushes. We have a lot of trouble finding truly “sunny” spots in our backyard due to the amount of trees we have, but right outside our master bedroom window was perfect for the tomato plants, pepper plants, gords, beans, and even watermelons (thank you Bennett). We will keep you updated on how this goes!

At the end of the day, we decided it was time to take more pictures of the front patio now that we have added the iron wrought shelf outdoors. Remember when we had the outdoor lantern indoors? It now has a new home on our patio.

What a difference from when we first moved in! Need a refresher?