Carmen from South Africa has sent an email asking:

What can I reuse/recycle to make attractive garden edging?

I’ve always been quite taken with the idea of wine bottles for garden edging (and an item on my long, long to-do list is to try making a raised bed on the same principle).

For a more rustic look, you should mimic the commercial bamboo edging using offcuts from local trees – sticks and branches about 2-5cm (1-2inches) in diameter that are too small to bother burning but too big for composting. If you want them all to stay in a neat line, you could nail them to a thin batten; else, just let the soil hold them in place.

I’ve seen some edging made from old ceramic tiles too but I’m not sure how they were supported – any ideas?

Any other suggestions?

Another suggestion from SaraR:

Hi guys. Thanks for the great ideas for what to do with the leftover coffee – I told one of my colleagues and now she’s taking it home to use on her garden.

Anyway, I have another one for you based on another of my naughty addictions – red wine. We have a number of cork-corks and plastic-corks lying around the house and add to the number regularly, but I don’t know what to do with them. Do you have any ideas?

We’re not wine drinkers so we don’t have much call to reuse or recycle wine corks or the plastic synthetic equivalents so any suggestions for SaraR would be very useful indeed.

I know there are a number of popular wine cork crafts – most commonly noticeboards or trivets – anyone got any specific favourites?
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Since jars and the like are kept out for reuse, our glass recycling bin is mostly filled with narrow-necked bottles: olive oil bottles, balsamic vinegar ones, organic squash bottles and if any wine or bottled beer drinkers have been around, those bottles too.

They don’t seem as easily reuseable as wide necked jars or bottles, and the oil ones are a pain to clean out thoroughly (or they are for me at least) – some of them have those “easy pour” tops in which make it even harder. But still, I’m reluctant to recycle them – mostly because there isn’t doorstep recycling for glass around here and it’s a chore to take them to the glass banks at the tip.

So any ideas to save me that tip-trip?

(Photo by levi_sz, c/o sxc.hu)