For a floral groundline, (not really a true box, but serves the same look) take treated landscape timbers, the ones that have 2 sides sawn slightly flat. Screw a short 2x4 perpendicular to the timber, near each end to act as “feet.” Drill holes into timber at regular intervals. Insert a “dollar store” flower bouquet into each hole. These are super versatile. You can vary how full or sparce you want the flowers to be or vary the colors to match a theme (such as all one color, red white and blue or fall colors).
The DIY jumps we made when the kids (now grown) were in 4-H are probably 15 years old. It was a really fun project and they are still in good usable shape. Keep you eye open for wood and other material you can repurposed. We got a lot of free decking when a neighbor was replacing their deck with a brick patio. Advantage to that was the wood was all weather resistant so didn’t need a lot of treatment. Checkout Freecycle or Craig’s list in your area.
Seasonal clearance of flowers, garlands, decorative pumpkins, mini Christmas trees, etc at Dollar Store, Michaels, or JoAnns are great sources for cheap, easy, colorful decorations. You can give your horse lots of new “scary” things to look at so that by the time you get to a show they’ve pretty much seen it all and don’t bat an eye.
One very versatile jump we made was a set of 6 stackable boxes. Each box was half the width of a jump. Four of them had wavy red and white line painted on them. The other 2 where blue with white stars. Depending on how you stacked them, the could look like a flag, just a row of blue w/ stars, or red waves. The other side of the boxes were also painted so that you could mix and match stacks to make various designs. Depending on how many boxes you stacked, you could of course also vary the height of the jump.
Planks (2x6s) also offer a lot of variations if you are imaginative. Cut them so that the ends can sit right in your jump cups. Then paint a different design on each side. Voila, 2 jumps for the price of one. We painted everything from seahorses, to piano keys (ya, that varying black and white can get quite a few looks at first) to plain white.
Since most lumber comes in 8 ft lengths we went with that. It’s not the standard show jump width, but it has several advantages:
- It’s lighter to move around so you will actually move your course more often
- You have to ride more accurately when you school, but at a show the wider jumps will seem so much easier.
- Longer poles are a LOT more expensive
Be imaginative, have fun, and good luck
