Clay Pot Bird Bath / Bee and Butterfly Water Dish

I’ve seen so many cute clay pot ideas on Pinterest and have been wanting to make my own bird bath / bee and butterfly water hole. You read everywhere how the bee population is declining and some of the things you can do to help get those pesky but so useful pollinators in your yard. One of the things is to not use pesticides and leave your lawn natural. Well, we already do that. In spring it’s full of dandelions and in the summer, clover. The other is to provide a water source and that’s what we were trying to accomplish here.

Each member of the family painted a pot with their own design, well I actually painted two but who’s counting? I had this idea of a cute little gnome house in my head but trying to transfer that to a pot was a whole different story. The first thing I should have done when I bought the pots was to make sure they fit properly. The bottom pot is my rendition of a gnome house. The problem is half of the pot is covered so the top of the door, a window and some flowers are covered up. That was lesson number one.

Lesson number two. Prepare the pots better for the first coat of paint. You apparently shouldn’t just slap some paint on the pot and hope for the best. A lot of little cracks appeared that weren’t there when I bought the pots. I’m going to have to read a few blogs about painting terra cotta pots and see what tricks they used.

Even with those issues I don’t think it turned out too badly. We’re not great artists but it does look cute out in the yard. I don’t think the birds are going to be too critical over the flaws in our artwork. We do have plans for one in our front flower bed and one for my daughter’s house as well. But next time I’ll do my research first to prepare the pot and make sure they fit together better or at least measure how much area I have available to paint on.

All in all we enjoyed working on the project together and are looking forward to making a few more. I can’t say that I’ve seen either birds, bees or butterflies using the bath but it’s available if they need it.