Several years ago, I visited a friend that had used wine bottles to make edging in his garden. I loved how the border added unexpected color to the garden, with its different shades of green, brown and blue. Even more, I liked the idea of FREE edging.
My yard is a giant garden, I have no grass, just different gardening areas separated by paths. I decided bottle edging was perfect for my garden.
About three years ago I started using wine bottles to make garden borders in my yard. I like to drink wine, but it would have taken me for ever to have enough bottles, just to edge a small area. I work in a restaurant and I am able to take all the empty booze bottles I want, so this project was easy to complete.
To make this free border, dig a trench around your garden, I worked in two foot sections. Place your bottles, standing upside down in the trench, leaving five to six inches of the bottle exposed, fill with the soil you removed to dig the trench and compact the soil with your hands on both the front and back side of the bottle.
You can bury all the bottles, so that the exposed bottoms are at the same height, or you can stagger the heights, I prefer to stagger the height of the edging.
I do not use clear bottles in my edging. Seeds sprout inside clear bottles.
Another project I made in the garden, using empty alcohol bottles, was to construct a bottle tree.
I've read that bottle trees originated in the Kongo. The practice was taken to North America by African slaves.
Malevolent spirits, it is believed, are drawn to the colorful bottles at night, they enter the bottle, and are destroyed the next day, by the sun.
I'm not sure if I've captured any evil spirits or not, but I do enjoy my bottle tree and the reaction of guests to my garden, that have never seen a bottle tree before.