The Easy Way To Create A Literal Lawn Chair For Your Yard

If you've been looking to upcycle an old chair or desire a unique seating option in your backyard, a grassy lawn chair is the perfect DIY project. Not only do these seats grow their own vegetation, but they'll be an attractive focal point of your backyard decor. To start this hack, you'll need an old metal chair, which could likely be found cheaply at a local thrift store. From there, you can layer the chair with soil, add grass seeds on top, water it, and wait for it to grow.

For the best results, use high-traffic grass seed, such as perennial ryegrass, which can be found on Amazon. This will help prevent the grass from dying when you sit on your chair. When watering, mist the area to keep the seeds from falling off. There are also some inventive ways to achieve this grassy chair without repurposing a piece of furniture, such as using cardboard or bricks to make the frame.

To make this hack more environmentally friendly, use cardboard to create the shape of a chair rather than buying one from the thrift store. Because cardboard is biodegradable, it won't leave anything behind if you decide to get rid of the unique chair later, and you can customize it to create whatever seat you'd like. Once the cardboard has broken down, the chair should still hold its shape because the grass's roots stabilize the soil.

To do this, cut some old cardboard boxes to create the basic shape of a chair. The pieces can be connected by adding slits and adjoining the various parts together in the shape of your choosing. You can also buy a kit from Nucleo, an Italian design studio, but it only includes the cardboard. If you'd like to make a couch rather than a chair, building a frame out of bricks and securing them with mud is another good option.

Soil for this project can be found at most hardware stores, including Home Depot, but the ideal type of soil for growing grass is loam, which you can make by combining sand, clay, and silt. You could also try using dirt from another part of your yard. Whether your frame is cardboard or brick, adding some expanded clay inside can improve air circulation for healthier grass.

While this hack is a fun project that will create an exciting seating arrangement, it will take months for the grass to fully grow and cover the structure. Not only will you need to water and care for this lawn chair consistently, but once the grass does grow, it will need to be trimmed regularly to continue to resemble a chair. It may also be difficult for the grass to grow evenly, so expect to deal with some empty patches.

Creating the frame and shaping the soil around it will be time-consuming, and depending on what materials you choose, this hack could be more expensive than opting for traditional lawn chairs. Additionally, if you have issues with ticks in your lawn, you'll want to be careful when sitting on this chair, as these insects love to hide in moist, grassy areas. However, if you don't mind the initial work of setting up the chair or the continued maintenance to keep the grass looking nice, this hack could be a fun and sustainable investment.