Cork Craft: Flower Pots of Cork

Welcome Spring! Spring is the perfect time to brighten up your home and garden while making use of some of your recycling. These containers are simple to make and mostly use materials you already have. Plant whatever you’d like – herbs, flowers, veggies.

Flower Pots wrapped in cork - a great way to re-use plastic containers.

What you need:
Empty plastic or glass containers or jars, recycled wine corks, cork sheets (preferable with self-stick backing) or cork fabric, potting soil. If the cork sheets don’t have the self-adhesive backing, you can also use glue. If you want the containers to be different colors, stain the cork first with a wood stain.

Re-use jars, containers, used wine corks and wrap with cork.

What to do:
1. Wrap the cork sheet around the container to measure the correct size.

Wrapping the container with cork sheets.

2. Cut the cork sheet to the size desired.
3. If you are using self-adhesive cork sheets, peel the backing off and wrap it around the container. If you are using cork fabric or cork sheets without a self-stick backing, use glue to adhere the cork to the container. Now the container is decorated.
4. To get ready for potting, cut a few recycled wine corks in half and put into the bottom of the container. These will help with drainage.

Add drainage with used wine corks cut in half.

5. Add potting soil to the container.
6. Plant what you wish – seeds, little plants, whatever.
7. That’s it!

On display and looking good - plastic container turned upscale flower pot!

Recycled cork grain in the garden

Cork is the ultimate environmentally friendly product. Even cork that has been used can be given a new life. You may already know of wine cork recycling - where used wine corks are collected and then re-purposed into other cork products including flooring, building material or used in crafting. Another cork product that can be re-purposed is granulated cork (or cork grain). Cork grain is often the bi-product of wine cork production. The grain is then used in many applications including as a stand-in for dirt on movie/theatrical sets. Once the grain has been used for its intended purpose, it can actually be used again. Among other uses, it works and looks great in a garden - offering texture and weed control. 

A terrarium made of re-used material.

Recently, a few classes at the local elementary school were building terrariums as part of their science unit. They decided to use recycled material for the containers. The large 2 litre plastic bottles would work perfectly. They would cut these in half, insert the desired material (rocks, soil, plants, water) and then seal them back together with tape. They ran into a problem when it was realized most of the original tops of the bottles were lost. So, they decided a wine cork would work. Sure enough, the recycled wine corks fit into the opening of the bottle and, when inserted, closed off their pop bottle terrariums. Below is the finished product. As a side note, months later the terrariums have yet to be watered and the plants are all thriving.

Sealed with a cork!

Reused materials make an excellent terrarium.