DIY Bottle Tree

Welcome to my parents backyard! Yep, that’s a 10 foot bottle tall tree made out of different diameters of steel round rod complete with colored bottles my mom collected from friends and a few she purchased from the internet. You can buy steel round rod at a local steel supply store. According to my dad, you can not buy steel round rod at the big box hard ware stores.

Here are a few pics I found on the ol’ internet of bottle trees at the Antique Rose Emporium:

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Upon closer inspection of the Antique Rose Emporium bottle trees you will notice that the these bottle trees are real cedar trees, and the bottles are simply placed on a dead branch.

The roses are pretty and smell yummy, but as a kid I remember the Antique Rose Emporium for the bottle trees, funky art, and this picture of a potted archway.

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Where did the bottle tree originate?

It turns out the idea of a bottle tree has been around since glass bottles were invented. According to this site, that was in 1600 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. As the story goes, people believed the whir of the wind through a bottle was the sound of spirits trapped inside. (Remember Aladdin?) Naturally, the next step is to put a cap on the bottle trapping the bad spirits inside, which of course, were then destroyed by the light of a sunny day (who knew vampires used to be so small :). So, people kept bottles by their entryways to protect their home from evil spirits, and the bottle tree was born.

I actually bought my mom a bottle brush tree for Mother’s Day a few years ago, thinking that would suffice her bottle tree fixation. Although the tree I got her did not look like this…

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It was about 1/20th the size with only 5 twiggy limbs. The tree had a tragic soccer ball to the head (branches) and never recovered. My mom decided a real tree could not live in that spot and thought a steel tree would be perfect. (There have a been a few broken bottles, but those are fairly easily replaced!) My family thinks our backyard is a soccer field.

Here was my mom’s inspiration tree. This tree was created by a Mississippi artist named Stephanie Dwyer.

And here is the DIY bottle tree beauty in our backyard…

*That brick wall is used as a soccer goal. You can see why the tree needs to be super sturdy!

A close up of her carefully crafted branches:

My mom and her bottle tree…

My mom’s tree is about 10 feet tall and holds 60 bottles. She estimates that it cost about $300 for materials. $150 for the metal and $150 for the colored bottles. The clear and green ones are just old wine bottles she collected from friends. You can buy vintage glass bottles on Amazon for $2.95 each. Here is an orange glass bottle ,turquoise bottle, and a purple bottle. $300 sounds expensive, but honestly, this style of bottle tree is hard to even find for sale. I have a feeling that shipping would be tricky since this sucker doesn’t come in pieces. Here is a super, simple bottle tree from Amazon. It only holds 10 bottles, but still keeps those spirit away and gives off the glow!