This doesn’t exactly fall into the garden category, but it is out there and involves digging and I guess someday will retire to take on some kind of garden purpose, so here it is.
I wanted a sandbox for the kids and there was no way I was going to look at one of those stupid plastic turtles. Plus I knew it would be around for a while, so I wanted something that could hold up for a couple of years. Construction behind our house unearthed a couple nice large rocks, I had a couple slightly used bricks, and lo and behold a sandbox was born.
It’s a hole lined with bricks and a couple of stones are patched in. The boulders are intended for seating, but I’ve never seen anyone over the age of 10 sit there. I dug out the pit to a depth of around six inches and then filled it in with something like a million bags of sand. Each spring I end up adding a dozen or so more bags to replace the sand that ends up in our house and in the kid’s beds.
It’s held up well, this will be year three. The only problem so far happened on the day the boy and his equally disorderly cousin decided to play with hammers and started mining bricks and then cracking them apart. Such is life.
…..and in case you’re wondering, no, the neighborhood cats do not use the sand for their business. They far prefer my mulched flower beds.
sorta like suburbia 
That is a gorgeous sandbox. I am not a fan of the plastic turtles, either. Plus, they don’t hold enough sand to play in!
My kids, alas, have aged out of their sandbox and I am going to reconstruct it into a raised bed. If I had been clever enough to design such a great sandbox years ago, I’d now turn it into a water garden. Just a thought.
The idea of a water garden never even crossed my mind and that’s a great idea! I was thinking of filling it with pea gravel and using it as a sitting area but a water garden or reflecting pond would be much cooler
Nice. This is the most elegant sandbox I’ve seen.
Thank you. Sometimes all I see are the unfinished projects, it’s nice to have one done where I like it.
My kids’ sandbox was converted into part of the vegetable garden four or five years ago. Your kids must love theirs, especially with those nice rocks in it! It is very kind of you to supply mulch for the neighbors’ cats. My own cats seem to enjoy our neighbor’s mulch more than our own, something I occasionally feel guilty about!
Cats will do that. Deep down inside I think cats hate people. My theory’s not well accepted by my cat loving friends but I’m pretty sure it’s true 🙂
A few weeks ago my son asked why the rocks were in there. I told them they were for sitting on, to which he said the sand was really much better for sitting. All that lifting and rolling for nothing…
What a great sandbox! I love your creativity! We are on a tight budget and wood is expensive! Although we have bricks already! A question, did you use any barrier on the bottom and sides to keep the dirt from falling in? Thanks!
No barrier, just dug down to remove some of the dirt and then backfilled with play sand. A friend filled up the back of his truck with some cheap sand from a nearby concrete block company and it was much nicer than lugging bag after bag of play sand from Home Depot!
I think the kids like digging down to the ‘dirt’ at the bottom, and eventually it all gets mixed in anyway.
Maybe a silly question, but how do the bricks stay in place and do you have more than 1 layer of brick? I love the look of this sandbox and would love to do something similar.
Hi Nicole, glad you like it!
The bricks are held in place on the one end by the grass, on the other end they’re kind of locked in place by the neighboring brick or stone. There’s just one layer of bricks and they’re set on top of some sand in order to level them. For the most part it’s just a ring of bricks and stone and even without too much construction it’s held up fairly well over the years!
[…] Sandbox idea shared by katob427. […]