A couple years ago I started doing an annual garden with my students. Every year we add more and more to the garden and find new ways to improve what we have. Most recently we added pallet trellises for growing pumpkins and to cover up an unsightly mount of dirt from gardening attempts prior to my arrival.

Upcycling pallets is a great, easy, and inexpensive project you can do at home, at school, or at work and there's really no right or wrong way to do it!

Step 1: BoM

Pallets

Paint

Twine/rope

L-Brackets (optional)

Hammer, drill, staple gun (also optional)

Step 2: Prep Pallets

We prepped the pallets by tearing off plants that didn't look good, or in one case we tore all of them off except for the top and bottom. We also remove any nails or other things that could hurt someone.

We're very fortunate that our school gets a fairly frequent supply of pallets, usually ones in good condition and often right outside my window.

Step 3: Paint

This was a fairly inexpensive project because we worked mostly with materials we already had, such as tons of those little $.50 bottles of craft paint.

As you can see in the second photo, we removed the majority of the planks and wrapped twine around the inside. We used staples to secure the twine in place.

Step 4: Set Up

For some of the pallets, we dug holes in the dirt and then filled them in and secured them with bricks or large rocks. Others we used L-Brackets to attach.

We've yet to have anything fall over or fall apart, so far everything has been holding up really well (even the paint).