After a rainy and busy few days, a garden project called me out into the yard. I had been meaning to finish the wine bottle garden bed edging we started a few months ago, but we needed to collect another large group of wine bottles first. Thank to the help of several friends, who brought over their empties and a few bottles of out own, I finally had enough to complete the circle around our small rose bed.
I will get some precise figures for your in a few days, but I counted counted 50-60 bottles used over a space that I estimate to be about 25-30 feet. Those numbers seem a bit off, though, so I need to get out the tape measure and count the actual number of bottles used. Needless to say, wine bottles aren’t that large, so it is going to take a lot of them to line any significant distance.
I also discovered how much easier the process can be if the ground is wet, as opposed to the mid-Summer bone dryness. It has rained quite a bit over the last several days, so digging the trench for the bottles could not have been easier. I covered 3-4 times the distance in this run than either of the first 2 sessions. It was so easy to dig that the bottles went in at the right height almost immediately. In the last session, I had a difficult time getting the bottles to go deep enough to match the first set of bottles I had installed.
If you are going to be putting in edging like this — and I would imagine any garden edging that requires digging — wait until after a significant rain or wet the area heavily with a hose and give it an hour or so to sink in before you try to dig. Now that I know this trick, I am sure that that process will go much more quickly in the future.
I used all sorts of bottles in my edging, but if you wanted it to look a bit more refines, you could collect bottles of a certain type or color. I have seen this edging done with all blue bottles and thought it was quite striking.
Previous posts on wine bottle edging:
I think this looks like a fun way to re-use wine bottles and would make for a very ecclectic look … but I’m curious how it would hold up in the winter time with lots of freezing and thawing. Broken glass in the yard/garden is a bit of a worry.
Yes, this might not work well in those places with a heavy freeze. I don’t think the bottles would break but might heave up out of the soil. If you have other edging, like bricks, I would guess that they would react similarly. If I come across any info from people in colder areas than myself, I will pass it on here.