DIY A Creative Arched Planter For Your Garden Using Recycled Plastic Bottles

Using reusable water bottles at the tap, and fizzing up sparkling water and soda with home soda makers, helps keep us from contributing countless plastic bottles to the post consumer system. With that said, pantries, fridges, and cabinets are filled with condiments, recipe ingredients, and even cleaning supplies — all encased in plastic. However, before throwing containers out, remember that all of these durable plastic containers can become something new, like an arched planter.

Simply save up a stash of similarly-sized bottles to cut open and connect to an arch form anchored to a base. Stuff the sliced-open bottles with soil, tuck in a few plants, and you'll have a sculptural garden addition that rescues waste from an uncertain future. While the exact materials needed to make an arch will depend on your approach, you will definitely need wire, two large but shallow plastic tubs, and an arch. You'll also need potting soil and plant starts or seeds. If you'd like to paint your arch, source a non-toxic product, and gather up painting supplies.

When using PVC pipe for your arches, you must bend the PVC pipe with sand you've heated in the oven, which requires playground sand, an oven-proof pan, a funnel (preferably metal), duct tape, a soldering iron, and heat-resistant gloves. If this sounds like a pain, you can skip it and simply use a hula hoop instead. Cut and placed into your soil, two hula hoop halves can support your bottle arch nearly as well as PVC pipe.

Making an arch is just one of many ingenious way to reuse plastic bottles in your garden. For those wanting the PVC pipe method, start by laying your bottles side by side in a long line. Measure their combined length, and cut two pieces of PVC that are 12 to 16 inches longer than the length of bottles. Then, duct tape one end of each pipe and fill them with sand to gauge how much you'll need. Pour the pipe's contents into your pan, and place it in a 360 degree Fahrenheit oven for two hours.

Then, holding the pipes in gloved hands, funnel your hot sand back into the tubes and tape the open ends closed. You can then bend them into your choice of curve. Also, bend up roughly 6 to 8 inches at the ends — at a 90 degree angle — to make "feet". Conversely, to stand the arch directly into the ground, slice the pipes' ends at 45 degrees instead.

Then, cut off the necks of your bottles. From the cut edge of each bottle, snip away a long rectangle on one side, about 2 to 4 inches wide. For thicker bottles, use a hot soldering iron to cut out this piece. Leave at least a 1½ inch margin between the cut and the bottom of each bottle. Slide one bottle's cut end inside another identical bottle. Repeat this until you have paired up all of your bottles.

At the opposite side of the bottle openings, make two holes at each end. Then, run lengths of wire through your holes to connect your bottles together. Place drainage holes in your plastic tubs and the feet of your two arches then set the ends of each arch into the two bins. Space the arches as far apart from each other as your shortest pair of bottles and loop more wire through the holes and around the feet to hold the arches in place. Lay your connected bottles over the two arches, wired side down, and attach the bottles to the arches using additional wire. Loop twists around the wire connections between each bottle unit. Then, place your creation in its new home, and fill the bins and the bottles with soil and plant starts.

If you've gone with a hula hoop arch instead, you can take your arch to another level by combining your bottles with a DIY light up garden arch hack. Cut your hula hoop in half, and measure the widest point. Using a rubber mallet, hammer two broom handles into the soil the same distance apart as the width of the hula hoop. Slip the ends of one hula hoop half into each handle. Create another arch like this parallel to the first one, and attach the string of bottles. Loop on some lights, fill the bottles, and enjoy!