Very often, gardeners accumulate things at their summer cottage that are a pity to throw away, and it is not clear what to do with them so that they serve a second life. However, it’s worth imagining a little, and the garden plot will be decorated with beautiful flower beds made from tires and other available materials. And old tires that have already served their useful life can help in decorating flower beds.
How to make beautiful flower beds from old car rubber tires and how to paint them will be discussed below.
We select and prepare tires for making flower beds with our own hands
Old car tires will be soft after a long period of use and will be easier to shape into the desired shape. You can ask your neighbors for tires - motorists who do not need them. You can also pick up used car tires at service stations, since they would otherwise simply be thrown into a landfill. And if you have the opportunity to choose between domestic and imported tires, then it is better to make flower beds from imported tires. Because tires from foreign manufacturers are much softer , so it is easier for them to give different shapes, turn them out, etc.
Dirty tires should first be cleaned of as much dirt and sand as possible. After all, it’s more pleasant to work with clean material, and the blades of the knives will become dull faster when working with tires dirty with dirt and sand.
Useful tips before coloring
In order for the flowerbed to turn out to be of high quality and beautiful, and for the site to acquire unique comfort, it is necessary to meet some conditions:
- Before painting, wash the tire well with any cleaning agent, then degrease it with acetone or another composition with a similar effect;
- prime the surface - this will help hide unevenness and reduce paint consumption;
- if you plan to create a light or bright flower bed, it is better to first apply a white tone to the tire;
- The tire must be painted on all sides, including the inside - over time, unpainted parts may protrude along the perimeter of the product.
If you follow the advice of experts, you can calculate in advance the exact quantity of selected materials. However, it is important to remember that tires are subject to deformation at low temperatures and in the sun, so there is no need to skimp on paint and create too thin a layer - the surface may crack.
Stages of creating a flower bed from tires
Before making a flowerpot or flowerpot from an old tire, you should carefully consider its appearance: in the shape of a bowl, which will have smooth edges, a flowerbed, whose edges will be cut off by waves, or a vase in the shape of a flower with petals and fringe.
You can come up with any shape for tires, but it usually always comes in the form of a “pan-lid”: the bottom of such a flower bed will be deep, and the top must be cut off. The contours of the cut can be easily drawn with ordinary chalk.
If the owners decided to make a flower bed from an old tire, then along the edge of the product they should draw the contours of the petals with chalk, and then cut along the contour with a sharp knife. Each of the petals should not be more than 12 cm. If the petals are made larger, it will be impossible to turn the tire out, and the shape of the flowerbed will be uneven.
When the tire is cut along the contour, then the tires need to be cut along the grooves in the longitudinal direction (the distance between such cuts is up to 10 cm).
In order to create a flowerpot from a tire on a leg, first turn the tire inside out. Many gardeners don't get this right the first time. In fact, turning a tire out this way is not easy.
Metal cord is usually cut with a grinder in several places. This saw cuts rubber smoothly. Cuts are made across the entire surface of the tire at an equal distance from each other (about 15 cm). And only then can you start turning the tire out. It should be remembered that it is difficult to turn out only the first piece of the tire; then it will be much easier to turn out the product.
How to make a flower bed from tires with your own hands (video)
How to cut a tire for a flower bed: options and technology
Any tool used to cut car tires must be well sharpened. Old tires can be cut with a shoe knife. To facilitate the cutting process, the blade of such a knife is lubricated with liquid soap.
It’s great if you can use a jigsaw to cut coatings. Using this tool, you can cut out various shapes and crafts from wheels.
To cut metal discs, you need to use a saw – a grinder.
Tires can be cut in different ways , depending on the shape of the future flower bed. You can cut the tires in half, or cut off only the top part.
How and with what to paint tires for a flower bed
However, it is not enough to give an old tire an unusual shape. After all, black or dirty gray flowerpots look ugly against the general background of the garden plot. Therefore, it is necessary to paint the outer part of the flowerpots, which were made from wheeled ramps.
To paint these rubber products, use any type of paint:
- oil;
- enamel;
- nitro-enamel.
If the outer part of the tires is clean, then the paint will lie evenly on it, and will last on the tires for more than one season. You can use car paint to decorate flowerpots.
Craftsmen use aerosol cans of paint for painting work. In this case, you can paint all the prepared flower beds from car tires in a short period of time. It is better to use light shades of paint when painting tires - in this case, the soil inside the tires heats up less.
Most often, gardeners paint only the outer part of the tires. However, it is much more aesthetically pleasing to paint the tire on the inside (at least its upper part).
Decor options
There can be a great variety of design options for flower beds made from car tires - it all depends on the imagination of the owners and the availability of different paint colors.
You can combine different colors and shades. Moreover, you can paint the lower part of the flowerbed with a darker paint, and the upper part with a lighter one. You can apply an ornament of a different shade to the main color. However, do not try too hard when painting the tires - when the flowers grow, they can completely cover the outer part of the flowerbed.
Some craftsmen do not stop only at painting such flower beds - they can stick glass pebbles onto the petals of tires, creating the effect of dew.
The correct combination of colors when painting flower beds made from car tires, which is “consonant” with the color scheme of the plants planted in such flower beds, will give the garden plot a unique flavor.
Tools for work
To make crafts from tires for the dacha, you will have to work hard and show ingenuity and creativity. The right tools for the job will help us with this!
You will need:
- detergents to remove dirt from the surface;
- sharp cutting tool: a thick knife or scissors for gardening;
- primer and paint (if necessary);
- a drill, screwdriver and other tools may be useful for making holes and fixing fasteners in them (we will talk about this separately in each DIY);
- a little patience.
Now we have stocked up with everything we need and can get started!
Original ideas for decorating a flower garden made from car tires
When decorating flower beds with car tires, you shouldn’t hold back your imagination. After all, from old tires you can build not only flower beds, flowerpots and flower bowls. Tires can be used in the manufacture of garden swings, armchairs and ottomans, various decorations for the garden plot, fences and much more.
- Tires can be cut in half and dug around a flower bed or along a path, separating the flower planting area from the garden path. These tires can be painted in various colors and can also be decorated with flowers or ladybugs, for example.
- You can install the main tire with petals cut out in the upper part on a pedestal of several tires placed on top of each other and painted in different colors.
- Flowerpots made from tires, mounted on legs like stools, look original. You can install a smaller tire on the lower tire filled with soil, and plant flowers around the circumference in the lower tire, and in the upper one place flowers throughout the entire space of the flower bed.
- Craftsmen carve various birds or animals from tires, planting flowering plants in the inside of such flower beds.
- Tires look interesting - flower beds suspended or screwed to the wall of a house or utility room.
If the garden plot is small, then it is more appropriate to place flower beds made of car tires, carved in the shape of a frog, a beautiful swan, a carriage from a fairy tale, a bright firebird or an exotic parrot. But on a large lawn, flower beds made in several tiers or structures made vertically will look better.
What paint to paint?
Before you start painting, tires need to be degreased . You can use a universal degreaser or a special one for rubber. The decorative design of the resulting structure should be carried out only with paint suitable for outdoor use and capable of adhesion to rubber. These can be compositions based on alkyd, acrylic or nitrocellulose bases, as well as automotive paints. In accordance with the chosen paint, a primer of similar composition is selected.
A pile of car tires
Slides made from waste tires look original. The height of such slides depends only on the imagination of the site owners. Small slides made from several tires installed in a checkerboard pattern on top of each other look beautiful. Moreover, in each of these tires you can plant different varieties of flowers.
The size of such slides, both in width and length, and in height, depends only on the imagination of flower growers and the size of the area allocated for such flower beds.
You can paint tires in such a flower garden either the same way or by combining shades.
Swan
Having gained experience in creating simple structures from tires, you can begin to create more complex products, for example, making a swan. The first stage is marking. The reality of the bird depends on how correctly it is performed. Most of the lines are drawn on the working path of the wheel: the tail, body, head and beak of the bird. Fenders are drawn on the sides of the tire.
It is recommended to start cutting out the swan with the longest straight lines. Thanks to this, when small parts remain, most of the rubber will be cut off, and the “jewelry” work will be easier to complete. You should also be careful in particularly critical areas (neck, wing feathers, beak) so as not to make the wrong movement and spoil the workpiece.
What flowers to choose for planting in a tire flower garden
It is better to plant flowers in flowerbeds made from car tires that will delight you with their blooms all season long. Flowers planted in a tire garden are usually unpretentious.
Moreover, you can plant flowering plants of different heights and shades of flowers. You can use climbing flowers.
These can be the following plants:
- fragrant tobacco;
- petunias;
- marigold;
- forget-me-nots;
- tuberous begonias;
- calendula;
- sunflower;
- Dianthus Grenoble;
- ordinary lumbago;
- Tradescantia;
- nasturtiums;
- Phlox awl-shaped.
The free space between flowering plants can be supplemented with fir cones - this decoration looks interesting, but next year such cones have to be replaced with fresh ones.
Painting options
Unprepossessing tires can be turned into a real work of art if you use your imagination and spend very little time. Several variants:
- A monochromatic bright coating that strongly contrasts with the plants, the general background of the site, the lawn and other parts of the landscape.
- Various compositions (pyramid, flower and other unusual ideas) are assembled from tires painted in different shades. In this case, you can paint the former wheels in such a way that the product really looks like a character or object (for example, the white petals and yellow core of a daisy flower).
- To ensure that a flower bed painted in one tone does not seem boring, you can draw on it various geometric shapes, silhouettes of cartoon characters, flowers - depict anything. The main thing in this case is to use your imagination.
What can be made from tires (video)
By combining different types and varieties of flowers, you can create unusually beautiful compositions in flower beds from old car tires. It all depends only on what colors the gardener wants to see on his site.
Old car tires can be perfectly used to improve the overall interior of a garden area. Most often they are used specifically for decorating flower beds or flower beds. And here everything depends only on the imagination of the owners - and there are a great many options for flower beds from old tires.
What to cut with?
To work you need a very sharp knife with a thin spine and a jigsaw. During the cutting process, the knife must be periodically lubricated with machine oil (can be used), this will make it easier to insert into the rubber. It is best to use a knife only for making small cuts, and do the main work with an electric jigsaw. The more powerful the jigsaw, the easier it will be to cut the tire. The blade should be made of high-quality steel with a reverse tooth.
You can also use a grinder, but the downside is that when using this tool, the edge of the cut will be melted , and the cutting procedure will be accompanied by an unpleasant odor .
If you plan to cut out any shaped elements, you must first apply markings to the tire with chalk or a marker.
