9 Creative Ways To Reuse Wine Corks Around The Garden

Wine lovers inevitably end up with empty bottles and leftover corks. There are some unique ways to repurpose wine bottles in your garden, but are you unsure of what to do with the corks? There are some ways to repurpose corks around the home, but here, we'll focus on how to use them in the garden. Corks are made of a fabulous material, so it's worthwhile (and sustainable) to reuse them around your yard. Natural cork is lightweight, durable, and waterproof, so it will hold up well in outdoor conditions.

Wine corks are also easy to work with. Most glues will work on wine corks, it's possible to make holes in them, and they're fairly simple to cut too. If you're having trouble cutting a cork, boiling or steaming it for a few minutes will soften it. Then, you can use a serrated knife or a small hacksaw to slice through. If you're worried about your fingers, consider holding the cork with a pair of tongs. Now, whether you have a cork or two lying around, or a container full of them, here are some creative ways to give them a new purpose. 

A wine cork is the perfect accessory to make holes to plant certain types of seeds. Creating this type of apparatus depends on what you're planting (different seeds should be planted at different depths and spacings). But if the size of a wine cork works for your plant of choice, you can attach them to a wooden board (or even a plank for a smaller version of this contraption) and press it into the soil to efficiently create several uniform, evenly-spaced holes. 

Resistant to the elements and quaint-looking too, corks make for adorable plant labels. You can use stiff but slim sticks from around your yard, carefully sharpened with a utility knife. Alternatively, if it's hard to sharpen the stick itself, you can pre-stab a hole in the cork and then push the stick in. If you can't find suitable sticks around the yard, use wood skewers instead. A permanent marker is ideal for writing a lasting label on the cork. You can also coat it with a protectant like Rust-Oleum's Universal All Surface Clear Topcoat Spray, for an added layer of resiliency. Got a lot of plants to demarcate? Here are some more ways to create garden labels from household items.

If you like the look of cork, you can assemble a decorative planter out of leftover wine corks. Start with a small wooden piece that you want to be the base of your planter, such as the Crafter's Square Wood Pallet from Dollar Tree, as shown in this video. Use a hot glue gun to stack and stick corks around your base piece to make walls for a finished planter. You can leave the corks natural or paint them for a custom and colorful look. 

You can use this DIY to dress up an existing plain plastic pot. It involves cutting each cork in half, lengthwise, and then attaching it to the sides of the pot using a strong adhesive. You can use a rubber band to keep the corks in place while the glue dries or use a hot glue gun and a strong longer-term adhesive (the hot glue will provide that initial stick to keep the corks in place while the other glue dries). You can even use this method to outline designs like stripes onto your plant pot using the corks. 

If you have an unfinished backyard or garden structure, or really any garden item with protruding nails, this is one way to repurpose wine corks for safety purposes. You can use the entire cork or cut it into pieces. It is easy to push a cork onto the sharp end of the nail, this greatly improves safety, preventing cuts and scratches that can come from the exposed metal — and looks rustically cute.

If you have small flags or banners that have a habit of blowing off their post, a little piece of cork might be all you need to keep them in place. Again, you can use the entire cork if you don't feel like cutting it, either by stabbing it into the flag stand or by creating a small hole with a skewer and then attaching it to the stand (if it doesn't have a pointy end like in this video). If you have the time, cutting the cork smaller will make it more inconspicuous.

Wine lovers will surely appreciate this entertaining project, which happens to be perfect for entertaining. It starts with a large planter pot that's an appropriate size and diameter for a side table. You'll also need a piece of clear glass or plastic that is larger in diameter than the planter to serve as the tabletop. Scrunched-up packing paper or newspaper can be used to fill the majority of the planter. Then, you'll want to cover it in a thick enough layer of corks that you can't see the paper. If you have enough corks, you can skip the paper and completely fill the planter with them. The end result is a lovely wine-themed table. This idea could also be expanded to a coffee table, using a half wine barrel for the base. 

Looking for garden edging ideas? Since they are waterproof and durable, corks can work well as a garden edging material. This example shows the idea as separation edging in a large garden planter. The corks outline different areas of the pot for different herbs. If you love the look, you can also use corks for general garden edging around flower beds and paths. Just keep in mind that the small pieces could be tedious to push into the soil, and you might want to do a double row to make the edging stand out more.

Repurposing wine corks to build a DIY birdhouse has to be one of the cutest upcycling ideas to date. The finished project is quaint-looking and completely one-of-a-kind. You can also get creative with the structure layout if you have something else in mind. Wine corks are like building blocks, so you can make your own custom birdhouse design.