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In our small town where we live, there is an annual treasure hunt. One week each spring, people put out their unused and unwanted items and other people can come and help themselves. It’s great for the people who want to clean out their spaces and it’s great for bargain hunters to get items they want for free. We are all about reusing and upcycling and this event is one of my favorite things about living in a small town! Anyway, one year at the annual treasure hunt we picked up some cinder blocks. We reused them to transform a corner of our patio with a DIY cinder block garden. 

Even if you aren’t lucky enough to get your cinder blocks for free, they are a very low cost item and make this project totally budget friendly. You can use as many as you like to fill your particular space. It’s fun to play with stacking them until you get just the look you like. This project lends itself well to small yards or spaces with no yard. You can easily put this garden space together on a patio or even an apartment balcony. You can stack them flat against a wall or use a small corner like we did. 

Once you achieve the look you want, simply fill the holes with a light potting soil mix. Potting soil will ensure that excess water will run out and your plants will not become waterlogged. (Pro tip: if your blocks line up in such a way that you have a very deep hole, simply fill the bottom half with rock or packing peanuts. This way your plants will get good drainage and you don’t have to use a ton of soil.) Because potting soil does not hold water, make sure you water regularly when temperatures rise.

When you have your garden space built, it’s time to pick some plants! Anything you would put in a container garden will work well in these blocks. You want something that’s slower growing so it doesn’t outgrow its space before the end of the season. Trailing plants look especially pretty in our DIY cinder block garden. 

To make this project even more budget friendly, this year we decided to purchase plants that can transition into indoor plants in the fall. That way we have a lovely garden space in the summer and before frost season we will remove them and pot them for indoor houseplants. Ivy is a great example of a plant that would transition well. 

This project is quick and easy to do, as well as low cost. We had lots of fun with it, hope you do too! For other upcycling, low waste ideas check out our post here.