Recycled Garden in Utuado

File this under "just for fun". This is not really a "day trip" … but worth a quick stop if you find yourself in the area.

On a recent day of exploring (to gather info for an upcoming article), we missed a turn we were supposed to make, and ended up driving on one of the many pretty, but long & twisty-turny roads in the interior of Puerto Rico. Sometimes, it takes a "mistake" just like this one to make an interesting discovery.

We were driving along Road 140 in Utuado, and we found this colorful "garden" along both sides of the road at KM 26.8. What a surprise!

Someone (Mary Ortiz) made this cute and fun "Recycled Garden" (Jardín Reciclado) from all sorts of trash that they either found on the road or picked from the garbage. You can see they gave everything a lot of thought to design and build these colorful and creative objects. They seem to have a thing for Disney movies!

There are many more pieces than we have photos of here. They have recycled everything from tires, to soda bottles, to fans, to children's toys & dolls … everything but the kitchen sink! We recently drove by it again, and I am happy to say it has survived Maria (or she rebuilt it), it is still there to enjoy with some new additions too!

It made us happy, so we're sharing it here with you.

This "garden" is located on Road 140 at KM 26.8 in the town of Utuado.

They have a donation box that you can contribute to if you want to give them some support.

If you do stop here, it is on a curve. So pull well off the road and be careful walking around — cars come zipping around the curves at a pretty quick speed!