So your old hot tub is at the end of its life, or you’re bored of it. Do you sell it, dismantle it and take it to the tip, or take a different tack and do something creative with it to enhance your garden without having to move it? We sent our imaginations in search of inspiration, and this is what we found.
Exciting uses for an old hot tub
A hot tub wildlife pond
As long as it isn’t leaking, a tub makes a great wildlife pond. Drain the water and clean the whole tub thoroughly to get rid of every trace of chemicals. Refill it and wait for a week for the fluoride and other chemicals in the tap water to waft away. It might go green, which isn’t a biggie. Just buy garden pond stuff to kill the algae, leaving the water beautifully clear, clean and wildlife-ready.
You can set it into the ground at ground level, but the easiest way is to leave it exactly where it is and have a raised pond. You want creatures like newts, frogs and toads to be able to climb out, and a way for any other animals that might fall in to get safely out of the water. A wooden ramp might be perfect, or a few long, chunky tree branches poked into the water, anchored at the bottom with rocks, for animals to climb up and out on. The last thing you want is to drown a hedgehog or cat.
Oxygenating plants are a must. The seats in a hot tub make excellent shelves to stand pots full of water plants that like medium depth. Put pots containing deeper water plants on the bottom of the tub. Add a layer of decorative gravel and rocks on the bottom for a natural look. Pile up a few lightweight breezeblocks and put a concrete, slate or sandstone slab on top as a platform for a sculpture or for wildlife to climb on.
The hot tub surround gives you lots of opportunity for beautiful planting, either plants in pots standing around the water’s edge, pots at ground level filled with tall plants like grasses and bamboos, or a mixture of both. Big flat rocks look gorgeous used as edging to hide the plastic. You can grow ivy up the sides all round and add evergreen and flowering climbers for colour and scent.
Once you’ve set the stage , you wait… and they will come. It’s like magic. One day there’s nobody home, the next your pond’s full of water beetles and water boatmen, dragonfly larvae and newts. Because a wildlife pond doesn’t need maintenance apart from stopping water plants like duckweed from taking over, just leave it alone and it’ll quickly gather an entire ecosystem of creatures around itself, from butterflies and birds to moths and reptiles.
A sunken hot tub garden
To make a sunken garden you’ll need to make four good, big holes in the bottom of your tub so rainwater drains out. Make fist-sized holes if you can, then they won’t get blocked up like small holes can to leave you with a swamp. Add a 20cm layer of gravel for drainage. For a lawn to lounge around on add 40cm of topsoil, mix in some compost then turf it. Now you’ve got a miniature circular lawn with walls to rest your back against. Very cool.
If you’re more of a gardener than a lounger you can create a stunning sunken garden to admire from above using gravel, pebbles, driftwood, rocks, planted beds and beautiful flowers. When you don’t like the colour of the hot tub itself, paint it using a paint designed for plastic. Black is great and mid-to-dark greys also complement plants perfectly as well as being hot on-trend.
A garden planter or flowerbed
You don’t have to make a sunken garden. You can fill the tub to the brim with earth and make a generous raised flower garden, a container for a really big specimen plant, or a vegetable garden that’s super-easy to tend because you can easily reach it all the way round without having to bend double.
Fill yours with blooms so there’s something in flower every time of year, from tulips and daffs in spring to vivid perennials and annuals in summer and into autumn, with winter colour for cold weather interest. Create your own Japanese style garden with rocks, gravel, miniature pools of water, moss, and bonsai. Make it 100% evergreen so it looks gorgeous all year round. Put a garden statue in the middle if you like, or a fancy bird feeding station, or a decorative tree like a colourful miniature acer.
Turn it into an impressive rockery filled with alpine beauties, with minimal soil required – a good way to get rid of hardcore or rubble without having to pay for it to be taken away or hauling it to the tip. Pile it in, cover it up, add 30cm soil plus decorative rocks and voila, your house leeks and other plants that like soil well-drained will be perfectly happy. Add insect-friendly rockery plants like sedums to attract more wildlife. Or you could let it go completely wild with wildflower seeds to make a fabulous mini-meadow.
A stylish grass platform for sunbathing
Turf it level with the rim to make a wonderful raised sunbathing platform. Poke a garden parasol in the middle for shade if you want to.
An animal shelter or kids’ playhouse
Add a lid and you’ve made an instant den. Obviously you’ll need to take the practical stuff into account so there’s a flow of fresh air inside and the rainwater won’t pour in. A flat roof will give you problems, a pitched roof is better at sending the water away. Maybe turn it into a sandpit and keep the hot tub cover as a roof when the kids aren’t using it. Or stash garden furniture or store your garden tools in it.
A table for buffets and bottles
Find or make a nice-looking wooden or metal top for your old hot tub and you’ve made an instant garden table for ice buckets, bottles and glassware, ideal for displaying a generous alfresco buffet.
A compost heap
Make drainage holes then fill it with grass cuttings, kitchen vegetable waste, tea bags, leaves and cuttings from the garden. Give it a year and you’ll have a supply of brilliant home-made compost. Hide it if you like, either using planting to mask the heap or adding a decorative border to obscure the sides of the tub. Flexible bamboo screens are great, easy to wind around the tub’s base. Or you could set natural branches into the ground around the edge to make a beautiful wooden feature wall.
Have we got your brain going? You might have other ideas. It’s always worth thinking before chucking something out, or you might actually end up missing out!
