Mum with arthritis uses old beer bottles and shower curtains to transform her ‘awful’ council house garden on a budget

A mum with arthritis who transformed her “awful” council house garden on a budget using recycled beer bottles and shower curtains has said her outdoor space is “beautiful now”.

Joanne Mason-Henry, 53, a kitchen porter from Stoke-on-Trent, renovated the barren space herself despite having no gardening or DIY experience.

The mother-of-four spent around £750 transforming her plot which now boasts an Indian sandstone patio, eight by eight-feet garden shed, and a wildlife pond.

To avoid blowing her budget, Joanne came up with unusual solutions, including using old beer bottles from the pub to create a boundary and hanging decorative shower curtains on both sides of her shed.

She admitted not being green-fingered and said because of her illness, which causes her constant joint pain, her garden had to be low maintenance and, therefore, contains relatively few plants.

“It’s changed how we live, because we never used to sit outside,” Joanne, who lives with her two youngest sons, Jude 17, and Noah, 13, told PA Real life.

“I wanted my garden to be cheap and very, very, very low maintenance, because my health isn’t fantastic.

“If you look around you can get things for really cheap or free.”

When Joanne moved into her two-bedroom semi-detached council property in 2016 she said the garden was “awful”.

She tried reviving the lawn but her seven-year-old spaniel Stan kept digging holes and scuppering her efforts.

In 2022 she decided to roll her sleeves up and transform the empty plot into her dream garden.

Her first task was to make the garden level, so she hired a “mini digger” for the day, which cost £80.

“Got that delivered. He gave me a five-minute tutorial on what to do and I was like right, let’s do this,” said Joanne.

“I just got on it and dug it up.”

She then purchased a 100-metre roll of membrane on Amazon for £50 and covered the ground to stop any weeds from growing back.

Next, Joanne turned her attention to the fencing.

“The fencing between me and my neighbour was battered, so it wasn’t just a case of slotting new fence panels in,” she said.

But to have it professionally repaired would cost £700, which was beyond Joanne’s budget, so she came up with a workaround.

“I just bought two roles of strong, bamboo sheeting which was about £30 a pack from The Range and attached it with flat metal wire,” she said.

“It’s been up three years now and we’ve had some really bad wind, but it hasn’t budged and still looks like it did when I put it up.”

Joanne also saw one of her friends on Facebook was replacing their large Indian sandstone patio, and purchased it for £100.

“There’s a bit of a story behind the patio because his wife was a really good friend of mine and she passed away through Covid so we couldn’t attend the funeral,” she said.

“I thought firstly, I can use these, and secondly, I’ve got a little bit of my friend in my garden.”

Laying down the heavy slabs was challenging for Joanne because her arthritis makes it difficult to bend down.

“It was hard, but I just literally did a few slabs at a time and took my time doing it,” she added.

“I like it because it looks old and rustic.”

After completing the patio, Joanne created a border down the side of the garden using brown and green recycled beer bottles.

“I was thinking what could I do that would be cheap and that would look pretty,” she said.

“I don’t even know why I though of bottles, and everyone was saying, you’re mental, they’re just going to break.”

Joanne’s boss at the Bleeding Wolf pub agreed to give her the bottles free of charge, which she then soaked in warm water to remove the labels.

“I got a rubber mallet, made the hole big enough, popped the bottle in upside down and just malleted it in,” she said.

“None of them have broken.”

When it came to filling her garden with plants, Joanne said “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing”.

“I kill cactuses in the house, I’m not a gardener,” she said.

Instead of planting them directly in the ground she purchased “bedding plants” in pots from the supermarket and sprinkled bark shavings around them, which cost only a few pounds per bag.

“I just picked them up whenever I went to the supermarket and saw cheap plants, even when they were half dead and giving them away for like 10 pence, because they come back to life if you water them,” she said.

She also added a £20 “wildlife pond”, a large plastic planter which is now home to frogs and a variety of snail species, as well as water plants, which Joanne was gifted.