2. Pallet Wood Plank Boardwalk
Pallet wood gives you a raised, dry route over a soggy lawn or a muddy patch, and it looks like something you’d pay a fortune for at a garden centre. The trick is choosing the right pallets.
What you’ll need:
- Heat-treated pallets stamped “HT” — avoid anything marked “MB”, which indicates chemical fumigation
- Crowbar, hammer, and a block of wood for levering planks apart
- Sandpaper or an orbital sander, plus exterior wood screws
- Landscape fabric and gravel or bark chips for the base
- Exterior wood oil or stain
How to build it:
- Pry the pallets apart carefully — work the crowbar along the slats rather than snapping them.
- Pull every nail, then sand the planks. Splinters are the enemy of bare feet.
- Brush on two coats of exterior oil or stain and let them dry fully.
- Lay two long stringers (the thicker pallet rails) along the ground, sitting on a shallow gravel bed for drainage.
- Screw the planks across the stringers, leaving a 5mm gap between each board so rainwater runs off.
Time: one weekend, plus drying time for the finish. Difficulty: moderate, mostly because dismantling pallets is tedious work.
Short boardwalks through a border look lovely, but you can also run one straight down the middle of a long, narrow garden to create the illusion of depth. A dark charcoal stain makes the wood look weathered and upscale; a clear oil keeps it pale and coastal.