New House: Have You Jumped on the Pallet Craze?

It seems that everywhere we turn in blogland and Pinterest and now even Canada Blooms, pallets rule the world! Once discarded and lying around on industrial sites and behind shopping centres, pallets have become the new hot trend in home and garden decor (can I even use that word when referring to something like a pallet?).

fgbotanica.wordpress.com via pinterest

And then this morning I saw this come in my inbox:

"My funky little pallet sofa is going to be in Cottages and Bungalows Magazine!"

funky junk interiors

Donna from Funky Junk Interiors has been chosen to be featured in Cottages and Bungalow magazine highlighting her amazing pallet sofa. If you haven't been to Donna's blog, go right now. She is a genius using recycled and found items in her very funky home. And she is funny and cute and humble (which she needn't be because she's sooooo talented).

Anyways, I digress. It seems that the lowly pallet can be used in a myriad of ways indoors and out. And during my recent visit to Canada Blooms, the one garden design that had all the Garden Writers Association members going back to time and again was this one, completely made out of pallets.

Ingenious, don't you agree? What a wonderful use of square footage - you can double/triple your garden output by using the pallets vertically. Thank you, garden designers BSQ Design - check out their website to see this design in progress.

So it got me thinking as to how I could use pallets in my garden design this year without being too trendy and without it appearing that I live in a salvage yard - something Donna has done so well with her sofa design. So I turned to Pinterest - where else? - for some inspiration and came up with these:

fgbotanica.wordpress.com via pinterest

Because this gardener has a wooden deck, she uses the pallets to lift her pots off the deck saving the deck from water damage and also providing some much needed drainage.

blog.opensourceecology.org via pinterest

This gardener is using pallets as raised beds, in this case for potatoes. A great way to get an early start on the growing season (not that we need that right now here in SW Ontario after all the summer like weather).

studiogblog.com  via pinterest

Compost bins seem to be the way to go for pallets. But I especially like the way this gardener has used some wooden fence post to create some vertical hanging space. Very smart.

source

Another huge composting area built entirely out of used pallets. Now this is what I need to deal with all the garden and kitchen waste I generate. That little black one from the town isn't quite big enough as it's full all ready and I've only used it for six months.

And of course, using pallets in the outside is not limited to the garden. You can use them to build all sorts of furniture items, like Donna's sofa or like this cute coffee table.

www.homedit.comhttp://www.homedit.com/21-ways-of-turning-pallets-into-unique-pieces-of-furniture/ via pinterest

Any way you look at this craze it's a good one - sustainable, interesting, inexpensive and accessible to most of us. Now to find me some pallets so that I can build the composting area.