Repurposed Garden Hose Into DIY Christmas Tree

6 Materials
$3
30 Minutes
Easy

I am one of those people who can’t throw something away just because it gets broken without at least thinking about how I can possibly reuse, repurpose, and/or reimagine it.

Like this expandable garden hose that somehow sprung a couple of leaks this past summer. It did last a few years, but these fabric expanding hoses are not as durable as newer versions.


So we bought a new one for the garden, and I got this one for my stash.


I wanted to keep it because of the fabulous texture it has when it’s not expanded, and I put it aside for what I thought might be a wreath project.


But when I pulled it out of my stash it totally said tree to me.

These expandable hoses have a rubber inner tube that expands and contacts with water pressure, which the crinkled outer fabric allows for.


I cut off the attachments at each end of the hose, and tied the rubber inner tube to keep it from being pulled into the hose.


If you let that happen, or if you pull the tube out, the fabric hose becomes pretty much flat as a pancake.

So I can keep the fabric texture I sewed it to the tube with strong fishing line, which should be enough to hold it all together.


I did this to one end only, and I’ll sew up the other end when I’m done. You’ll see what I mean later.

Here’s the one end all sewed up, and the tube cut off.

Now, to make my repurposed garden hose Christmas tree, all I had to do was grab my handy dandy glue gun and start gluing the hose to a 10" styrofoam cone.


The hot glue will melt the styrofoam a bit, but just a bit.

Because of the ripply texture of the hose it’s important to hold it in place as you go.


You want to make sure you get a good glue connection between the hose and the cone.

And you just keep going, making your way up the cone.


Until you get to the top.

Here you have to guesstimate how much more hose you need, and then cut it while holding onto the inner tube.

Then you sew it up with strong fishing line just like the other end.

For the very top, I rolled some of the hose fabric, without the tube, into a rose-like shape.

And I glued it on the top.


This was to cover the styrofoam tip, but also to have something that I can glue a tree topper to.

Then I went into my Christmas stash to see what I could find to decorate the tree. I really wanted something fun and colorful, but also simple.


I found a thrifted faux mini strand of lights, and a gold foil light reflector.

The light size was a perfect fit for the light reflector so I pushed a red one through and glued it in place. Then I just wrapped the string of lights around the tree in a way that looked good to me.


The string of lights is glued at the beginning and end only.


I was going to use the jello mold that was in the first picture as a tree trunk, but when I was done my tree I decided I didn’t need it. If you wanted more height you could certainly do that.


My tree, including the light reflector, is about 12" tall.


This repurposed garden hose Christmas tree was super easy to make, and only took me about a half an hour.


The hose texture is so prefect for a Christmas tree, and I still have some of the hose left to use for something else someday. Who knows what that will be!


I hope this project has inspired you to look at things a little differently. Even a leaky garden hose can be repurposed into something fun.



Here it is with two repurposed trees that I've made in the past.


You can find them and more DIY repurposed Christmas trees on my blog here.


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