9 Unique Ways To Repurpose Wine Bottles In Your Garden

If you're a wine lover, you know just how many empty bottles end up in the recycling bin each week (only about 33% of the glass produced in the United States actually gets recycled, so billions of bottles end up in landfills each year). When you can repurpose or upcycle those bottles, especially when it comes to beautifying your garden, what could be better for both you and the environment? Yes, colorful wine bottles can make an interesting — and budget-minded –addition to gardens and other outdoor spaces when they're made into something pretty and useful. 

For instance, some folks fill them with water as beautiful outdoor decor that may help with pest control. That hack requires hanging them, while other handy reuses require some glass cutting. There are reportedly several ways to accomplish this, including using masking tape to mark a perfect circle, a drill bit to score a cut, and then heating the cut with a candle before using a hammer to carefully break off the weakened top. A safer bet, especially if you want to try several different projects requiring cut wine bottles, might be purchasing a glass bottle cutting kit, like the Home Pro Shop Premium kit for $19 from Amazon. If you'd rather spend your time in the garden rather than getting crafty, not a problem. There are some ways to repurpose a wine bottle that don't require anything more than digging holes with your trusty garden trowel.

Bottle trees can fit amicably into a garden setting, adding pops of color to flowerbeds and hedges as an alternative to flowering plants. No special skills required for this reuse of colorful wine bottles since you can buy a wine bottle tree already made online and just add the inverted bottles of your choice to it. Anytime you want to change the look, simply switch out the bottles to different colors. Look for a variety of sizes and shapes of wine bottle trees, like this Fun Express Bottle Tree from Amazon for $35.

Have a favorite wine label you want to show off? Make a vase for your garden table, add some cut flowers, and you've got a lovely centerpiece for dining al fresco or entertaining outdoors. Making a vase like this one just requires cutting the top of the bottle away. If you don't want to cut anything, though, you can opt to use a whole wine bottle as a vase for long-stemmed flowers like roses and add some baby's breath or other small accent flowers to make a pretty arrangement sprouting from the neck. 

Wine bottle garden edging is one of those simple DIY projects requiring nothing more than digging a hole and inserting an empty wine bottle with the neck down. You can remove the labels from the bottles beforehand if you want a clean look right away, but if you don't, they'll wear away naturally over time. Like other types of garden edging, wine bottles can serve to keep soil and mulch in place, but water will still flow between them to provide adequate drainage for your plants and shrubs. 

Some wine bottle candle holders require cutting the tops off the bottles, but it doesn't have to be that complicated. Just use thin tapers that tuck firmly into the mouth of your bottles, or melt the bottom of a wider taper so that it fits snugly. If you like the look of a torch-style oil lamp better, you can purchase a Wine Bottle Torch kit from Amazon for $23.  Whether you decide on candles or torches, you can place them around your garden, hang them (safely and carefully) on fences, or sit them on decks or tables. 

Making a wine bottle vacuum feeder to hold homemade hummingbird nectar is simple using a cork-type stopper with a nozzle, like the National Artcraft feeder tubes from Amazon for $14.66. These are easy to insert and remove when you need to refill the feeder. The only other thing you'll need to complete this DIY project is a holder so you can hang it. You can create one easily by wrapping about 2 feet of copper wire around the bottle to hold it upside down, leaving enough slack at the top to form a curled hook. 

You can also upcycle empty wine bottles to help take care of your plants. Spending money on self-waterers for when you're extra busy or traveling isn't necessary when you can make your own. Simply use a wine bottle with a screw-on cap, remove the plastic liner within the cap (if there is one), and poke a hole in the top with an awl or ice pick, or by hammering a nail lightly into it using a piece of scrap wood as a base. Fill the bottle with water, recap it, and insert it inverted in the soil. 

This is another simple use of empty wine bottles to brighten a dark corner of a garden. If you have some unused strings of battery operated fairy lights stashed away, just insert one of them into a wine bottle and you've got an instant lamp that will impart a subtle glow. Remove the labels first by adding 5 to 10 teaspoons of baking soda to enough water to cover the bottle and let it soak for 30 minutes. Wipe the label away with a rag or use steel wool to finish the job if it's being stubborn.

Wine bottle planters can take several different shapes. Some require cutting the side of the bottle off, but many just use the base of a bottle about 5 to 6 inches in height. You can leave the label on if you like the look of it. Using rocks to plant succulents for the short term – a few weeks at most — is acceptable. If you're going to leave these plants in your wine bottle planter for the long haul, however, be sure to place them in well-draining soil and just put rocks on the top for decorative purposes.

Wind chimes are said to keep away negative vibes and attract positive ones. Who wouldn't want that for a garden or another outdoor area around a home? Wind chimes can be crafted using one bottle or several along with other materials like colorful beads, seashells, and even polished glass rings cut from wine bottles. The downside is that they do require some bottle cutting and other crafty fabrication. If you're not up for that, many crafty individuals repurpose wine bottles into wind chimes in lots artsy variations sold online and at craft fairs.