diy lemon tree

Y’all know my love for lemons! They are so cheerful and bring so much color after a dreary winter season. The Dollar Tree currently has lemon stems in their floral section, so I grabbed five of them, knowing I could use them for something! Well, a couple of days later, I saw an old, outdated topiary at a thrift store, and I knew EXACTLY what I was going to do with the lemon stems!

If you have priced faux lemon trees recently, you know how pricey they can be! Today, I’m going to show you how to combine old and new to create something fabulous!

For this project, I used the following items:
– Faux topiary plant
– (5) Lemon stems from the Dollar Tree
– Floral tape (you could also use floral wire)
– Scissors
– Brown paint
– White paint
– Foam paintbrush
– Sanding block

Let me start by saying that although this topiary had seen better days, the structure was still in good shape! The leaves were higher quality, the trunk looked great, and the little square pot was adorable. For only $6.99, I thought it was a steal!

The first thing I did was remove the bow and cut off all of the flowers. I took a wet towel and rubbed down the leaves, because they were pretty dusty. Here is my before picture.

Here it is after a little bath and removing the flowers and bow. I spread the leaves out and gave it a good fluffing!

It cleaned up nicely! Next, I started placing the lemon stems. I snapped the bottom section off the stems to make them a little shorter, then I spread the branches apart, so the lemons would not all be condensed to one area.

Using floral tape, I wrapped the stems around the trunk of the tree.

I continued doing this with two other stems. Then, I separated the final two stems to create smaller pieces.

I used these smaller stem pieces to fill in around the top and also create a few small branches further down the trunk. Again, I used the floral tape to secure all of the stems to the trunk.

Now, it was time to spruce up the planter. It was really cute and had a great design, but it did not show up very well. The moss was similar in color, so you couldn’t really see the details on the planter.

I pulled everything out of the base and dusted it off well.

I decided to paint it white to brighten it up a bit. I painted two coats using Apple Barrel White.

While waiting for the paint to dry on the planter, I decided to paint the floral tape to match the tree trunk. I used Apple Barrel Brown Oxide to paint the tape.

Once the planter had dried, I sanded it down just a little to give it a distressed look.

Next, I began to reassemble the tree. I placed the preexisting foam block and moss back into the base. I could have easily replaced these, but they were still in decent condition.

I placed the tree back into the foam and filled in the top with the dry moss.

With just a little TLC, we took a droopy topiary plant and created a cheerful lemon tree! How adorable is this tree?!!! It looks so much more expensive than $13!

I love the different colors and textures of the leaves. The leaves on the lemon stems are much cheaper looking, but they do not look bad at all when mixed with higher end greenery. This tree would be adorable on a porch or even on a buffet table for height! At three feet tall, this tree is very versatile and will be a great addition to your Spring décor! I hope this inspires you to get creative with outdated floral arrangements and trees!

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Last Updated on March 4, 2023