If you’re wondering what to do with an old swimming pool, and are interested in gardening, we’ve got some intriguing ideas to consider.

Whether your old swimming pool is a kiddie pool, an above ground style, or an in-ground concrete pool, these can become ready made raised garden beds!

We’re MOST enthralled with the garden pool ecosystem, which is covered below.

Old swimming pools can make for great in-ground or raised bed gardens!

No Old Swimming Pool to Repurpose?

Even if you don’t have one an old swimming pool to transform into a garden, if you’re a gardener, you’ll likely enjoy the videos below.

The second video is a stroll through a backyard transformation of an unused old swimming pool into a garden oasis.

We don’t have an old swimming pool and we’re not planning on doing backyard aquaponics anytime soon, but we were fascinated by this concept. So if you’re a gardener, whether or not you have any interest in setting up something like this, you’ll like enjoy the creativity and viewing this schematic and video tour through a sustainable pool garden.

But first, a few ideas of uses for other kinds of old swimming pools.

Ideas For Old Swimming Pools

Use Old Kiddie Pools for Raised Bed Gardens

These are great to repurpose into moderately raised bed gardens. You’ll need to add some holes to the bottom for proper drainage, and then ideally, add a shallow layer of gravel to help with drainage and to keep the holes from getting clogged up with soil, as well as to keep from losing soil that can wash out over time through the holes as it drains.

The lovely Jess of Roots and Refuge Farm does a good job of offering multiple ideas for using a kiddie pool for a raised garden bed. Jess also shows multiple other ideas for cheap or free containers for plants and raised bed gardens, but we’ve cued the video below at the point where she starts on the kiddie pool garden bed idea.

Kiddie Pool Garden Bed

Old Above Ground Pools

Rather than hauling these off to the dump once they’re no longer being used for family fun, this could become a raised bed garden! You’ll need steps up to it and to leave rows for walking and harvesting, but this can be done using planks or mulch in the walking areas.

This will require a truckload of good soil delivered and (hopefully) dumped right into the pool itself, to save you tons of time and energy. To start with good soil is to help guarantee a successful garden. So if you’re going to the trouble to plant a garden, you’ll want to plant in a good foundation of good soil and preferably, organic compost.

What to Do With Old In-Ground Concrete Swimming Pools?

Create a garden❣️

The cost to fill in a swimming pool or remove it, is high. But if you have an old pool no longer in use, that’s a good size for a garden. What if you could use that pool to provide you with fresh food 365 days a year?

One family in Arizona did just that. The turned their out-of use old in ground swimming pool into a backyard aquaponics garden that’s a closed loop food production system. This worked so well, that the original project is now a non-profit organization bringing this system to the world! 🌟👏🏼🌿

“A garden pool creates an entire ecosystem. It can take a good nine months to create an entire ecosystem. We build it in a day but Mother Nature takes time.”
~Dennis McClung, founder – Garden Pool NPO

The Garden Pool

The Garden Pool idea was invented by Dennis McClung in October of 2009 as a miniature self-sufficient food-system. McClung and his organization, GardenPool.org, now travel the world teaching others how to create this backyard garden of Eden.

“Garden Pools (GPs) are being built all over the world offering an easy and sustainable solution to current food production challenges.”
~Dennis McClung, founder – Garden Pool NPO

Transform an Old Swimming Pool Into Food Production 365 Days of the Year!

“The Garden Pool system uses 98% less water than conventional farming methods, less land and yields 10-18x more produce with next-to zero external inputs, no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and raises very nutritious food!”
~Dennis McClung, founder-Garden Pool NPO

Old Swimming Pool Becomes a Garden Pool Food Oasis

This garden pool^[1]https://gardenpool.org/ combines solar power, water conservation, poultry farming, aquaculture, and more, to convert water-intensive swimming pools into a food oasis.

If you find it hard to imagine what these Garden Pools look like on the inside, enjoy this video tour. You’ll see a miniature self-sufficient ecosystem.

But this is about so much more than just planting a garden in “dead” or unused space.

“When you talk about sustainability, you’re not talking just about the planet any more. Sustainability also involves how you’re going to save yourself, our body, your family… how you’re going to take care of your kids or your parents… how you’re going to take care of your neighbors and your community because we’re all in this together.”
~Kate Radosevic, Valley Permaculture Alliance via TreesMatter.org

Super cool, right? It’s wonderful to see more examples of what’s possible. For much more on this, you can visit GardenPool.org.

“A garden pool is a sustainable food production system.”
~Dennis McClung, founder – Garden Pool NPO

Share Your Old Swimming Pool Transformations

If you’ve rehabbed an old swimming pool into a garden, please let us know.

And… if you live in a city or community with an old swimming pool (especially an outdoor version), perhaps that could be upcycled into a community garden!?  #Possibilities!

Transforming Old Swimming Pools Into Ecosystems

Imagine an entire neighborhood of older homes with old in-ground swimming pools, many of which are scarcely if ever used once the kids have moved away. Now imagine many of those eye-sores of old swimming pools transformed into a vibrant, living ecosystem of plants, flowers, birds and other pollinators.

“It all starts with a pond. Sometimes the pond is in the deep end of a pool, sometimes the ponds are free-made koi ponds, or sometimes we dig ’em.”
~Dennis McClung, founder – Garden Pool NPO

A Garden Neighborhood Can Transform a Community… a Community, a Region… a Region, a…

Such a garden ecosystem could grow more than enough food to feed one family. Beyond that, imagine bringing all that plant life and greenery into one subdivision, such as in the arid desert community in Arizona where the Garden Pool project began.

A neighborhood transformation to hundreds of vibrant plants, trees and beneficial insects and pollinators could transform the ecology of an entire community. From there it’s easy to imagine the gradual region wide ecology changing for the better.

At the very least, a garden community that’s self sustainable, able to feed itself and share with others. A community of plant lovers, gardeners, market gardeners and hobbyist, all working for the greater good of themselves and their own family, and subsequently serving the greater good of all.

“I think that change comes from within, and if you change what you’re doing at your household, that can change communities, and who knows, maybe eventually the world.”
~Dennis McClung, founder – Garden Pool NPO