Turn Your Garden Into A Cottagecore Dream With Giant Cement Mushrooms

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Cute garden accents are a must if you enjoy spending time outdoors. While this includes functional items like seating, wildlife feeders, and lighting, it also includes purely decorative elements that add character and charm to your yard or garden. You can purchase these accents at home and garden retailers, but they can often be expensive, even when made from relatively basic materials like concrete or resin. A clever DIYer, however, has an ingenious technique for making adorable concrete and wood mushrooms for outdoor spaces using just some concrete mix, a plastic bag, a screw, and a wooden post. The results are fun and whimsical mushrooms that you can paint to perfectly fit your outdoor space.

Even better, this project is budget-friendly and easy to create, involving no advanced concrete or building skills. Make a bunch of them for your garden or line them up along a fence in various sizes and colors to create an installation for your perfect cottage garden. While the wood may deteriorate over time due to moisture and weather, the concrete will last for many years. You can always replace the posts with new ones or repaint the concrete as needed. 

Create a recess in the ground with a shovel the desired size and depth of your planned mushroom, then line it with a sheet of plastic. Mix a quick-set concrete like Quikrete, in a bucket or wheelbarrow and pour the mixture into the hole. As it thickens, add a large 4-inch screw into the center. Allow the concrete to cure for the next 20 hours until solid. Remove the mushroom cap from the mold. Drill a hole into a short wood post to attach the base to the cap. You can either dig a small hole for the base to rest in to keep it standing, or add a piece of wood with a second screw to stand the mushroom on a flat surface. Great options for the posts include thick branches, driftwood, logs, or wooden fence posts cut down to size (these are usually treated and will last far longer than untreated wood.) You can also make more naturally sized mushrooms inside a bowl filled with sand with a quick and easy mushroom DIY that adds sticks directly to the molds. These smaller mushrooms are great additions to a fairy garden to add whimsy to your backyard. 

These mushrooms can be customized with a painted finish, whether it's natural tones, pastels, or bright colors. You could also use a tint, like Quikrete Concrete Colorant, designed specifically for concrete. For a fun and artsy spin, use the concrete as a surface to add some mosaic materials like tiles, beads, pottery, and glass in plastic sealed with grout. You could also create a mushroom that is entirely made of concrete by using a plastic planter as your mold, which you can cut to remove once the concrete is set.