Earlier this summer my garden hose exploded while I was watering some flowers in my front yard.  I looked into patching it, but quickly realized it wasn’t worth the hassle.  As I was winding it up to throw into the trash bin I decided to do a quick search to see if there was any good uses for an old, broken garden hose.

A found a few decorative ideas and even some useful hacks (saw blade shield anyone?) but nothing that really used an ENTIRE 50 foot garden hose.. And then I discovered Brian Jewett.  He is the AMAZING LA artist who makes things out of.. ZIP TIES.

Seriously.

And one of his zip tie projects were these garden hose cacti for a large art installation (about water conservation) in LA:

I told you so!!  Aren’t those fabulous?!?

Well.. I decided it was worth a shot at making my own.  The construction looked pretty straight forward.  I didn’t have nearly as much hose as Brian used, but I did come up with my own version which I think is pretty darn cute: 
I added some faux flowers instead of the spigot handles, and I put my cactus in a flower pot, so it didn’t look like it was coming out of the ground. 

Not a bad second life for a worn out old busted garden hose.

To see how exactly it came together, I put together this short video tutorial:
It is mostly made up of my Snapchat snaps from the day I put it together.. So if you have been following me there.. you got a sneak preview already!