More uses for a chimenea – Let’s get creative

It’s a garden fire, giving you comforting heat and beautiful mood lighting. It’s a BBQ with a difference on which you can cook everything from an entire chicken to soups, casseroles and regular barbecued meat and fish, in all sorts of creative ways. But there are more uses for a chimenea than you might think. What if you find you don’t use yours as often as you imagined? Or you break a clay chimenea and can’t use it for its original purpose any more? Here are some more uses for a chimenea.

Old chimenea? Unwanted chimenea? Try this!

See the modern steel chimenea above? Very sleek and stylish. Without the fire, stood amongst the flowers in a bed, anchored by rocks or pebbles or set into a circle cut of of a lawn, it makes a garden feature with a cool sculptural look. And it’s tailor-made for displaying interesting things inside. Decorative pebbles, a contemporary vase, a place for a plant pot crammed with climbers or flowers, or a flock of tea candles.

It doesn’t have to stay black and silver. Because you’re not going to be using it as a fire you can paint it using regular house paint and it’ll look fine for a season or two. Then you just repaint it. Imagine it painted vivid fuchsia pink with a bright yellow rim, with a Mediterranean blue ceramic pot full of gerbera inside. Wow. Or with a single small potted evergreen glowing subtly inside. Don’t forget solar LED lights, which look simply stunning. Maybe fill it with a frothy pile of faux silk flowers, some curvy driftwood, exotic shells or a glittering heap of glass pebbles.

The Opera, as you can see, offers a different kind of creative potential because of the 360 degree metal mesh body and the pedestal that lifts it off the ground. This one’s pictured with a separate chimenea mat, which protects surfaces from the heat and ash. You don’t need one of unless you’re going to have a fire inside, although it does make a really nice matching stand for your creation.

This design is clearly ideal for planting too, because the plants get the light they need all the way around. Put a climbing plant in there, something like sweet peas, and they’ll clamber all over the inside, make their way out, climb up the chimney and burst out of the top like a fragrant fountain. Gorgeous. There are plenty of scented climbers that’ll make a display inside a chim like this smell great as well as look fabulous, including nicotina and chocolate vine. Or you can go for something contemporary and unusual, say a large globe-shaped cactus or a bowl of exotic succulents or alpines.

The mesh version above is also brilliant for strings of LED garden lights thanks to the 360 degree view. And as long as it isn’t windy, one big, chunky citronella candle inside will give you lovely flickering glow as well as keeping the mosquitoes and midges away. You can balance it on a tree stump and hang a carved wooden bird or fish inside for a fun DIY garden sculpture if you like.

The glazed chimenea above comes with plenty of potential. As you can see there’s room for water in there, making it into a shallow, safe water source for birds and insects. It wouldn’t be such a good idea with a cast iron chimenea because of rust dissolving into the water but pottery is perfect. The birds can stand on the little lip at the mouth and it’s also good to put a rock inside that sticks out of the water just in case something falls in and needs to climb out.

Most chims come with a chimenea stand. Take it off the stand and it sits firmly on the ground. Cut a bowl-shaped hollow out of the soil to sit it in, so the mouth is just above ground level, and when filled with leaves and moss it makes a cosy, dry place for small creatures to shelter and sleep in, maybe even a hedgehog if you’re lucky. Do the same but add a soft blanket and it makes a safe and shady place for a cat, kitten or little dog to curl up in. In both cases you’ll need to keep the rain lid on so water doesn’t get down the chimney. Alternatively, simply fill the bottom of the bowl with ice cubes and chill your fizz and soft drinks inside. Maybe just pile up your outdoor crockery in it for alfresco parties.

So… an unwanted, under-used or broken chimenea is never a disaster – it’s a creative opportunity. We’d love to see what you make of yours.