21 Creative Ways To Repurpose An Old Shovel In The Garden

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With regular maintenance, a quality shovel may last a lifetime, but this longevity and durability also makes them ripe for upcycling and repurposing, even when they're rusty or the handles have snapped. In fact, a corroded old shovel head or weather and work-worn wooden handle often adds rustic charm to garden art, water features, wrought iron gates, and trellises. A clever shovel upcycle will bring wildlife to your yard in no time if you turn it into a birdhouse or feeder. The scooping nature of the shovel head makes it the ideal holder for plant pots, while the round wooden handle transforms into the handle of a tool caddy or the rungs of a tree-trimming ladder. Wrap the head in chicken wire and press succulents into it or use it as a canvas for a whimsical garden or festive scene.

If you don't have an old shovel lying around your house, ask around family, friends, and neighbors or post a request in local freecycle groups on social media. Scour garage and yard sales. Your local thrift store may even carry garden tools. Even a broken shovel handle or just the shovel head by itself can work for many of the ideas listed below. Of course, if you have a project in mind but just can't find anything secondhand, there's nothing wrong with buying a new shovel. An Emsco Group Workforce Tools Round Point Shovel with Wooden Handle and Heavy Duty 16 Gauge Steel Head costs about $24.

Screw a JAKOUE 5 Inch Heavy Duty Black Flower Pot Ring — a 2 pack costs about $8 — to the handle of an old shovel. Lean your DIY against a wall, hang it on a fence, or push the shovel head into the lawn and pop a pot planted with cascading flowers into the ring. For something more elaborate and space-saving, remove the shovel heads from their handles and push them into large holes drilled into a tall wooden pole or large tree trunk. Each shovel head becomes a shelf for the planter.

Transform an old shovel into porch or yard decor for whatever festive season you're wanting to celebrate right now. You don't even have to be a great artist to pull this DIY off. For Christmas, paint the shovel head with a snowman, adding an oversized bow and the national flag for some classic Americana vibes. Adorn a snow shovel head with a cute task-related phrase like "Help Wanted" and some simple snowflakes. Cut the handle down and stick it in a rustic metal bucket filled with artificial harvest season foliage for a fall theme.

You bought (or handcrafted) a wooden birdhouse but you're having trouble finding a spot in your garden to hang it. Why not make it portable by attaching the birdhouse to the handle of a shovel? Cut off the handle top, mount a small piece of sturdy scrap wood to the top using a bracket, screws, or glue. Attach that to the top of the handle, then mount the birdhouse on top. Once you've decided where you want the house to go, simply dig the shovel firmly into the ground in the lawn or garden bed.

The easiest way to make a garden sign from a shovel is to write on the shovel head with chalk or paint stencils. Stick to simple, practical things like "Berry Patch," "Fresh Flowers," or "Grow", or add some sentimentality or humor to the mix. Instead of writing on the shovel head itself, bury that in the ground and attach a wooden sign to the handle. If you've set it up in a sheltered spot, make it pretty by decorating the shovel with artificial blooms and bows.

Are you an artist or do you feel like you have an artist hidden inside you? Bring them out by using shovels to create a sculpture to adorn your lawn or garden. It could be something huge and wildly abstract or you could create something more representational, like a sunflower on a metal stalk. This project may require some welding experience, particularly if you only want to use parts from the shovel. It might also help to plan your idea out on a piece of paper so you know how many shovels to source.

If you have a plasma cutter in your workshop (or have access to one), draw a design onto an old shovel head and cut it out to create fretwork fence or garden art. If you can't draw, you can transfer an image onto clean metal using an ink pen, wax paper, and a burnishing tool. Some ideas for scenes include a one or multiple sunflowers or daisies, a fisher person carrying a bucket and rod, a hummingbird surrounded by trailing foliage, or abstract art nouveau-inspired patterns. Really, you're only limited by your imagination.

Tired of that boring wooden gate leading into your backyard? Transform the entryway into something more inspiring by installing a wrought iron or wood framed gate with bars made from old shovels. This works with wood-handled or solid metal digging implements; simply screw, hammer, or weld the shovels to the frame, crossing them at the center or laying them next to each other in a fan shape. If you're not a carpenter or welder, you should be able to find someone in your community who can craft such a gate for you.

The animal kingdom is ripe for the picking when it comes to inspiration for garden art. Shovelheads easily become the body for all manner of avian species, from owls, storks, and flamingos to colorful feathered friends more likely to come from a Dr. Seuss book. A shovel head turned upside down with legs attached and painted red and black becomes a ladybug, while the multiple shovel heads turned on their side, fitted with fins, tails, and scales, and attached to thin metal rods transforms into a school of fish.

Here's a brilliant way to repurpose old garden tools around your home: Make a shovel bird feeder! Drill a hole into a pole and push a shovel head into it by its stem. You'll need a tight fit to ensure it stays put. Alternatively, bend the stem of the shovel head 90 degrees, drill a hole, and screw it to the pole or tree. If you're struggling to get your hands on an old shovel but like this idea, you can buy a ready-to-mount Shovel Bird Feeder for Wall or Garden Shovel for under $6.

Using an old shovel as a trellis doesn't have to be complicated. Simply stick one into your garden bed, handle-side down and shovel head-side up, and train a flowering vine up it. Use three to make a teepee trellis. For something a bit fancier, lean three wooden shovels vertically on the ground and connect a few horizontal stakes at set intervals up the handles. Attach your far-more-affordable-than-new rustic fan trellis to a wall or drive it into a garden bed or even a large planter for climbing vegetables or ornamentals.

Looking for smart ways to use leftover wood scraps in your garage? Take the wooden handle off an old shovel, cut it into smaller pieces, and use it for the pieces for the handles of garden tool caddies. If you also make said caddies from scrap wood, it's double the savings. The rounded or oval handles of a shovel are designed to be ergonomic — they fit nicely in the hand — so they make equally good caddy handles. If you have a lathe, you could even turn the pieces to create uniquely patterned handles.

Speaking of lathes, if you have one out in your workshop, you can use it to quite literally turn an old wooden shovel handle into a nifty garden tool called a dibbler (also sometimes called a dibble or dibber). Gardeners use dibblers to quickly make holes in the soil for planting everything from seeds or bulbs to seedlings and bare root stock. The beauty in making your own on a lathe is you can make it as long or short as you prefer and add measurement marks to help you determine hole depth.

If you've let your fruit trees get a bit too tall, harvesting ripe pickings from the highest branches is easier said than done. Sure, you could scale a ladder, but that poses at least a little risk to your safety. Instead, cut the stem from an old shovel head, attach a piece of plastic plumbing pipe with a triangle cut out of the rim, and affix the contraption to a long handle. Place the mouth of the pipe under the fruit you want to harvest, lift upwards, and the fruit will fall into the pipe.

For this DIY, you use the metal of an old shovel head to form the head of a smaller garden trowel. First, decide what type of trowel you want to make and draw it onto the shovel head. For example, a traditional or transplanting trowel has a round end, while a tissot trowel for dividing plants has a distinctive V cut into the top of the blade. Cut the shape out, polish it smooth, and weld it to an iron rod. Push the rod inside a wooden handle and you're ready to get digging!

If bending down to weed your garden beds has your back complaining, you can make a long-handled weeder or hoe from an old shovel. Cut a two-pronged fork from the shovel head. Turn the very end of each prong 90 degrees and drill a hole. Cut a strip of metal from the toothed side of a discarded saw — it should be match length between the two prongs of your shovel fork — and screw that to the prongs. Re-attach the new head to the shovel handle and get out into the garden to clear those beds of weeds.

Trim the handle of an old shovel short and screw it into the middle of really anything flat and tray-like to create a carry-all for transporting plant pots, seedlings, fertilizer, tools ... You're only limited by your imagination in how you use it. It also makes for modern farmhouse style patio or porch decor. A bundt cake pan works great for the tray since it already has a hole in the middle, metal farm feeder trays are cheap and sturdy, or get creative and bend old license plates into a circle.

To assemble this unique DIY water feature, you'll need an even number of old shovel heads — six works well — and a large trough. Place the trough in your garden bed and sink two wooden posts into the ground either side of it. Attach your shovel heads to the posts, tipping them downwards slightly to facilitate the flow of water from one to another. Use a PULACO 400GPH Submersible Water Pump for about $19 to push the water through a tube to the top of your shovel waterfall.

Need a ladder to scale tall trees or get atop your pergola to prune that ancient snaking grapevine but don't want to buy one. If those old shovels you're about to retire still boast sturdy handles, you can cut them down to size and fit them between two long and sturdy planks to create the rungs of a wooden ladder. For safety, make the rungs secure by drilling holes into the planks that exactly fit the width of the shovel handle, then screw them in once you sink the handle pieces into said holes.

If you're a dab hand with a paintbrush, use the head of a rusty old shovel as your next artistic canvas. A 32-color set of Nicpro Outdoor Non-Toxic Acrylic Paint with Brush, Sponge, and Knife costs about $34. With that many hues at your disposal you could adorn the shovel with everything from a cute penguin or adorable cow to a meaningful phrase bordered by pink and white polka dots. Can't work a paintbrush very well? Use stencils instead! A 16 piece set of Zonon Flower, Butterfly, and Hummingbird Stencils costs just $10.

Loosely wrap the head of an old shovel in a strip of fine chicken wire, like Fabulas 0.6 Inch Hexagonal Galvanized Chicken Wire Fencing Mesh for about $21, leaving the top of the shovel head uncovered and forming a shallow basket. Line the basket with moss, disguising the wire and leaving a hollow space in the middle. Add a few handfuls of succulent soil into the basket and water everything. Plant your favorite succulents in the basket and secure the shovel to a patio pole. Or, screw it to your fence or garden shed wall.

Cut a handle-width slot into a wood round, fit a bracket to the handle, and push the handle through the slot over the bracket. Alternatively, cut a hole in a wood round, remove the grip from the shovel, slip the round over the handle to the bracket, and reattach the grip. Set the table up by driving the shovel head into the ground. Craft matching stools by curving the handle of an all-metal shovel like a question mark and affixing it to a heavy base. The shovel head forms the seat.