There is something sinister about a landscape of rusted metal: a corroded car off the highway, a forgotten Midwestern town, or a decaying seaport. The visceral response to the rambling, dark red oxide could come from its resemblance to blood or from the reminder of our own inevitable oxidation. Or maybe it’s just a fear of tetanus.
Rusted metal is often cast into junkyards as an unusable, unsightly material but that’s too bad. There’s a certain charm in rust. Borrowed from the designs of landscape architects, here are 10 genius garden hacks using rusted metal (Cor-Ten steel included).
Above: A rusted gate on the side of landscape architect Christine Ten Eyck‘s own house in Austin, Texas. Photograph by Matthew Williams for Gardenista. Above: Another gate at Ten Eyck‘s Austin house. Photograph by Matthew Williams for Gardenista. Above: A Cor-Ten steel slot fountain in a San Mateo, California garden designed by Growsgreen Landscape Design. For more of this garden, see Gardenista Considered Design Awards 2015.
Above: Architects Piercy & Company designed a perforated steel fence to let light into a brick-paved courtyard and to visually connect the two gabled wings of a house built behind the facade of a Victorian stables in London. Photograph via The Modern House.
Above: A simple rusted metal fire pit is at Glen Oaks Cabin in Big Sur, California.
Curb Appeal
Above: Blue fescues line a Cor-Ten steel fence. Photograph courtesy of Huettl Landscape Architecture. For more, see our plant guide, Gardening 101: Fescue.
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