Joanne's garden's gotta lotta bottle!

Budget-savvy mum transforms lifeless patch into a vibrant, low-maintenance urban idyll that's perfect for her arthritis

- Sentinel Reporter

EMPTY beer bottles and shower curtains don't usually make good bedfellows, unless they're destined for the scrapheap.

But Joanne Mason-Henry had other ideas.

The 53-year-old kitchen porter turned those items into unwitting tools for her Stoke-on-Trent council house garden makeover, turning a drab, lifeless patch of land into a vibrant and calming retreat. Her achievements are all the more exceptional given that she has arthritis and no gardening or DIY experience.

The mum invested nearly £750 in the makeover, crafting a haven that features an Indian sandstone patio, an 8ft x 8ft garden shed and a wildlife-friendly pond. To minimise costs, she embraced inventive approaches such as repurposing empty beer bottles collected from a pub to form borders and adorning her shed’s interior with distinctive ornamental shower curtains.

Despite her lack of horticultural nous, Joanne revealed her arthritis meant she fashioned up a garden that requires minimal upkeep, resulting in a limited number of plants. "It's changed how we live, because we never used to sit outside," said Joanne.

"I wanted my garden to be cheap and very, very, very low maintenance, because my health isn’t fantastic. If you look around you can get things for really cheap or free."