Yard Plotted to scale, promise

make it yourself

Bare Branch Tree Stand

Three dead branches set upright in buckets of concrete, so a yard with no trees gets a treeline. Free material, about thirty dollars of concrete and buckets, and it reads better than anything you can buy because it is an actual tree.

  • $32 ish
  • 3 hrs start to finish
  • total beginner
  • 8' tall when done

grab this stuff

What you need

  • 3× Dead branches, 6 to 9 ft, three of them you have these
  • 3× 5 gallon buckets $12
  • Fast-setting concrete mix, 50 lb bag $8
  • Exterior screws and cable ties $6
  • Matte black or dark brown spray paint $6
  • All in $32

Tools, and that is it

  • A drill or a screwdriver
  • A bucket or barrow to mix in, and something to stir with
  • A saw for trimming, a pruning saw is plenty
  • Gloves. Concrete burns skin over a couple of hours and you will not notice until later

here we go

How to make it

  1. Find dead wood, not green wood

    Look after a windy night, ask a neighbor who has had trees cut, or check what your city does with brush. You want branches that are already dead: light, gray, bark mostly gone, snapping rather than bending. Six to nine feet, and take more than three because some will be wrong once you get them home.

    oops-proofing

    Green wood is the mistake. It is three times the weight, it drops bark all over the lawn for a two weeks, the leaves shrivel instead of falling, and a fresh cut willow or poplar will genuinely try to sprout in the bucket. Dead, gray and light is what you are after.

  2. Set each one in a bucket

    Stand the branch in the bucket, wedge it upright with a couple of scraps, and pour the concrete in around it. Fast-setting mix goes in dry with water poured on top and does not need mixing in a barrow. Hold it plumb for a few minutes and leave it overnight.

    oops-proofing

    Do not set them all perfectly vertical. A dead tree leans. One upright, one at about ten degrees and one at twenty looks like woodland; three plumb poles look like a fence you have not finished.

  3. Widen the crowns

    A single branch is a stick. Screw or cable-tie two or three smaller branches into the upper third, angled upward and outward, until the top is wider than the base. That top-heavy fan is what makes a silhouette read as a tree from the road.

    oops-proofing

    Work on the outline, not the detail. Nobody will see twig texture at forty feet in the dark, and everybody will see whether the shape is wider at the top than at the bottom.

  4. Kill the shine and hide the bucket

    Mist the whole thing matte black or dark brown, lightly, so it stops catching streetlight as pale gray. Then sink the buckets into the border, pile leaf litter and bark round them, or drop them behind a low shrub.

    oops-proofing

    The bucket is the thing that gives it away, and it gives it away in daylight, which is when most of your neighbors see the yard. Ten minutes of leaf litter does more for this build than an hour of anything else.

  5. Stand them as a group, never in a row

    Put them at different distances from the sidewalk and at different heights, with the tallest furthest back. Two close together and one apart reads as trees; three evenly spaced reads as planting. Leave a gap you can see through, because the gap is where you put the creature.

  6. Light them from below and behind

    Put the theme's spotlights on the ground at the foot of the trees aiming up, or behind them aiming back at the house. Branches lit from below against a dark sky is the entire effect, and it is why this build is worth more than its thirty dollars.

    oops-proofing

    Never light them from the front. Front light turns a silhouette into a stick in a bucket, which is exactly what it is, and the whole job of this build is to stop anybody thinking about that.

one more thing

Bring them in or lay them down before winter storms. A 9 ft branch in a 5 gallon bucket is stable in ordinary wind and is not stable in a gale, and it falls towards whatever is downwind of it. Two is enough on a small lot and five is not too many on a big one; the bucket and the concrete are the only real cost, so scaling up is cheap. This also unlocks the rest of the theme on a treeless lot. The metal Bigfoot silhouette needs a trunk to hang on, the tree peeker needs something to peer round, and the spotlights want branches to aim into. Build the trees first and the rest of the plan starts working.

where it goes

Layouts this one lives in

Same build, any yard shape. Here is where it lands.

  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Wide Shallow, No Porch Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Narrow Shallow with Porch Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a L-Shaped with Projecting Garage Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Deep Narrow Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Corner Lot Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Split-Level or Raised Ranch Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Sloped or Terraced Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Small Urban Postage Stamp Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Circular Driveway Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → Cryptid Crossing on a Long Driveway, Rural Frontage Roadside warning signs, glowing eyes in the shrubs and something large standing at the edge of the light. Less gore than most Halloween themes and quite a lot more unsettling, which makes it the one that works on a quiet street.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Wide Shallow, No Porch Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Narrow Shallow with Porch Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a L-Shaped with Projecting Garage Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Deep Narrow Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Corner Lot Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Split-Level or Raised Ranch Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Sloped or Terraced Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Small Urban Postage Stamp Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Circular Driveway Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.
  • → The Old Cemetery on a Long Driveway, Rural Frontage Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh.