How do you use broken pottery as a garden decoration?

One common way is to make a toad house. Just a little shelter and water makes it easier for toads to live in your garden and eat bugs.

This image search shows many ideas.

I’ve never heard of anyone just sticking broken pottery in the ground but there is a very common kind of mosaic making called pique assiette where people use broken plates and pottery instead of tiles to make their mosaics.

Well,I am a potter who would have a boatload of shards had I saved them all. The only thing I can think of is a mosaic…or maybe she tries to imbed them in the ground as a pathway,motared in of course??

Mosaic maybe? [Edit..sorry that’s already been suggested]

Or maybe smash it up into smallish pieces and use it as gravel for a path. Big chunks perhaps used as a border.

I don’t use it as decoration, I put it to work. I put shards in the bottom of my garden pots, before I add soil, so they drain properly.

But @laureth‘s toad house idea is my favorite so far.

@snowberry I like the idea of using larger pieces as a border,

@laureth I can envision what you think she might do.

I have saved some larger pieces that have broken and given them to a local mosaic artist who incorporates them into borders for mirrors and picture frames.

I don’t see them used in a garden path. The pots have been glazed and fired which vitrifies the clay and broken edges can be quite sharp. Similarly smaller shards could be risky to walk on and I would not want to risk getting a piece lodged in me.

Thanks to all

SRM

I too am a little unsure of what your friend means by having ceramic pieces sticking up in her garden. But regardless of that, you might enjoy these nifty random mosaic stepping stones that can easily be made with ready mix concrete and a mold. My brother and sister in law found a bunch of random ceramic and glass items and made a whole bunch of these (just make sure the stuff that is sticking up is smooth and not sharp).

Another friend of mine, who is an artist, actually made her kitchen counters in her home as a mosaic (with regular tile grout) and random bits of broken ceramic pieces. It was really gorgeous. You could do the same thing with an outdoor table like this

This next picture might be a little bit closer to what your friend is talking about, although these ceramic pieces seem to be simply deposited into the ground and not adhered in any way.

This next picture shows a bunch of plates (standing upright, embedded in the ground) being used as a border to a flower garden. That’s kind of neat.

And this last photo is a decorative plant border made out of random pieces of broken ceramics.

@Kardamom Thank you for all of these links. I have to get an invitation to her home to see what she was talking about. I have more broken pottery to use to wangle that invitation.