This month, as I am looking to inject a little personality into my garden, my daughter’s school art project provided some inspiration. Using a well-known material we all have free access to, you can create an endless number of imaginative creatures. The material, of course, is rocks!

As we scouted the yard for rocks, we found a variety of examples. While I was more focused on finding the more attractive rocks and pebbles, my daughter showed no such constraints. She even picked up several pieces of asphalt from the crumbling road.

We took the rocks inside to wash them, then painted them with a variety of all-purpose craft paints.

After the painting was done, we glued them together into sculptures with an outdoor superglue. It was a little tough getting the rocks to balance while they dried but the finished sculptures were solid.

When we were done we had monsters

a frog

a “duck”

and a fairy.

We tried posing them in various spots around the yard. Because we only had small rocks to work with, our creatures are pretty tiny in scale compared to the plants but they add a lot of whimsy and fun. They seem to show up best in bare spots, near smaller plants and on rocky surfaces. Here is a monster guarding the boxwood.

Two watchmen for a growing cedar.

and a fairy hiding out beneath the hosta.

These little creatures are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, sparking imagination.

My last step is to spray the creatures with a clear-coat sealer and hope the craft paint and sealer will stand up to the weather. The directions on the sealer advise not to spray in high humidity. We may have to cheat a bit on that instruction otherwise we will be waiting until fall!

Hope you enjoyed this free or cheap garden art project. You could even skip the paint and leave the rocks natural or stack them in piles instead of gluing them.

Would you try this rock art project? What other ideas do you have for using rocks in the garden? Please share in the comments.