Bring An Old Barrel Back To Life As A Gorgeous Water Feature In Your Garden

Adding a beautiful water feature to your yard is one of those outdoor updates that can add value to your home and make your yard more inviting. However, purchasing even a small water feature (like a fountain) is often quite expensive. Luckily, if you don't want to pay an arm and a leg to buy a beautiful rustic fountain, you can easily make one yourself out of an old barrel. For this hack, any wooden barrel will work, but many people choose to use large whiskey or wine barrels because of their lovely antique appearance and rustic charm. If you already have an old barrel in mind that you'd like to bring back to life, that's great. If not, you can easily find a used one online or purchase a new barrel from a home brewing supplier. Another option is to ask a local brewery or distillery if they are willing to part with some old barrels.

If you have the option, it's a good idea to buy a half barrel. If you get a full sized whiskey barrel, you will need to cut it in half using a circular saw to create two large half barrels. These two half barrels or wooden tubs can then be used to create your fountains. Or, if you only want to make one fountain, you can easily fill one with dirt and turn it into a beautiful planter or use it as a clever way to store your garden hose. Because one of your tubs will have a hole in the bottom (leftover from when it was a whiskey barrel plug), it's best to use that one to turn into a planter or as a hose storage device and save the one without the hole to make your fountain.

Now that you have your half barrel, you can start putting together your fountain. The first step in this process is to make your barrel waterproof again. If your barrel hasn't held liquid in a long time, the wood has probably shrunk and the barrel will leak when you first fill it up with water. To swell the wood up again and make your barrel watertight, you will need to fill the barrel with water twice a day until it stops leaking. This process can take up to two weeks.

Once your half barrel is watertight, go ahead and dump it out and move it to where you want it to live in your garden or yard (otherwise it will become too heavy to move). Next, fill the barrel with water. Then, you can start adding in your aquatic plants by stacking bricks on the bottom of the barrel and setting the plants in their original pots on top of the bricks. You can add just a couple plants or even make a ring of plants around the edge of the barrel. Lastly, for a finishing touch, go ahead and place a small solar-powered fountain or water agitator in the middle of the barrel. To keep the solar powered device in place, you may need to tie it to a brick and then place the brick at the bottom of the barrel.

If you want to create a small in-ground water feature, you can also try repurposing an old tire into a mini pond.