Add fun decor to your garden for Halloween. ATTRIBUTION: Thomas (Flickr)
Design a spooktacular garden this Halloween. From a haunted pumpkin patch scene to ghouls and ghosts that float in the air, there are countless ways to frighten and impress trick-or-treaters and other guests in your own backyard. Each Halloween idea is designed for outdoor displays that are able to withstand those chilly October temperatures. Check out these ideas for an eerie Halloween garden.
1. Scarecrow Greeter
Scarecrows have been a major emblem of the Halloween season for decades. Create a cornfield scene in your garden by attaching cornstalks to a picket fence to act as a background. Add grimacing pumpkins, orange glowing lights, and, of course, a creepy scarecrow to act as a greeter for all of the little trick-or-treaters.
2. Congregated Ghosts
Make your garden the place where ghosts come to congregate on All Hallows’ Eve. Create inexpensive ghosts using white gauze fabric glued to balloons or small bouncy balls. Use a permanent black marker to add features to the ghosts’ faces, and hang them from trees so that they can fly in the wind.
3. Watchful Eyes
Give trick-or-treaters that spooky feeling that someone’s watching them. Create sinister glowing eyes and hide numerous pairs throughout the garden. Eye can be hidden in the grass, inside bushes, or even peeking from behind trees. Cut the shape of eyes out of cardboard tubes and insert plastic glow sticks into the tubes for instant glowing eyes.
4. Pumpkin Patch
Display a pumpkin patch that no child will want to enter. Suspend cobwebs from nearby trees, incorporate oversized spiders, and add chilling critters like rabid mice, bats, and rabbits with red eyes. Don’t forget to add a slew of pumpkins, some carved and some left whole.
5. Ghoulish Graveyard
Your garden is no longer just a garden but a ghoulish graveyard where the dead rest. Make or purchase tombstones to place around the garden. Take apart a plastic skeleton and scatter the bones around the graveyard. Slightly cover the bones with dirt to appear as if they are rising from the grave. Plastic skulls containing LED lights can be placed around the graveyard to light up the scene.
6. Spider Central
If you’re afraid of spiders, you’ll want to steer clear of this Halloween idea. Create an oversized spider web with furry tarantulas climbing through the web and up and down web strings attached to tree branches. Use white nylon rope to create a large spider web over your garden. Wire and fabric can be used to create the massive spiders.
7. Bizarre Plants
No Halloween garden is complete without some bizarre plants. Venus flytraps can grow outside in frost-free climates and are sure to give a fright to your guests. Cattails euphorbia (Euphorbia leucadendrom) looks similar to skeletal bones when leafless. This plant can survive outdoors in frost-free climates and requires very little water. Add a pop of dark color to your garden with bunches of “Hot Chocolate” callas. Their dark, moody look and texture can create an ominous feeling in your garden.