Lawn Ornament Storage

Well it’s that time of year again for storage of lawn ornaments. When you have to consider where you are going to store those lawn and garden ornaments: statues, ceramic planters, and other garden decorative. We have a lot of flower gardens and therefore a lot of garden ornaments to put away for the winter. Most lawn and garden ornaments do not do well when the temperature drops below zero accompanied with four of five feet of snow. If water freezes in the crevices of these ornaments or ceramic flower pots it will expand and destroy them. This can be avoided by storing them out of the direct weather. Garages are usually too small to accommodate everything we wish to store in them and it’s a great deal of work to lug them into the basement.

We store most of our lawn and garden decorative outside and cover them with a tarp to keep the snow and moisture off them. This has worked well for a number of years as we have never lost one to the freezing weather. The challenge is to find a location to store them where they won’t be in the way of winter activities. As we have a large arbor we gather the lawn ornaments and store them in one end of it and cover them with a large tarp. The larger statues we leave in the garden and cover them with a plastic trash bag, taken care to tie the bag tight at the bottom to prevent the winters wind from blowing them off.

My neighbor collects all his lawn and garden decoratives and stores them along the property line and covers them with a tarp, weighing it down with cement bricks. It is just as effective as storing them in an arbor. Either way storing them outside beats carrying them into the garage or down to the basement and saves inside storage space for essential items. Here are a few suggestions for storing these ornaments.

Dump all the earth or planting soil out of the ceramic pots and planting boxes. If the planting soil freezes it will probably break the container.
Leave the planting soil in plastic or wood containers if you prefer. Freezing will not break these containers.
Store the items upside down to avoid any moisture collection on the inside.
If an item is too large or cumbersome to move, cover it with a plastic trash bag, tying the bottom tightly.
Cover all the items with a plastic tarp making sure that is weighted down to avoid the wind blowing it off.

Properly winter storage of lawn ornaments will save you the replacement cost come spring and they should serve their purpose for years.

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Garden Statues and Ornaments

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