aging stone/concrete

[Thunderbird+]

I have a new concrete garden ornament with a stone effect finnish, at the moment it stands out like a sore thumb, looking like its just dropped out of the sky.

Dose anyone know of a short-cut recipe I can use to treat it, to encurage mosses and lichens to grow on it to give it that "olde worlde" look. No graffiti, Thank You.

[paulineward]

Spread natural yoghurt on it and within weeks it will 'age'.

[hammerman]

I'll second the above answer

[SaxyJag]

Alan Titchmarsh showed something years ago that involved painting on a mixture of horse dung, water and something else.

[Aprilis]

My partner suggested covering it in milk as it increases bacterial growth and encourages moss to grow on it. Same principal as the yoghurt I guess.

[sixpence]

Watch out for animals if you use yoghourt. We found our dog having a great time licking the stuff off! Our fault, I suppose because he is allowed to lick our empty yoghourt pots out.

[WendyS]

Brushing it with a mixture of natural yoghurt and muddy earth, as other have suggested will certainly speed up the ageing process and make it look weathered. There is apparently something in the yoghurt which speeds up a natural biological process. Finding real horse dung might be a problem but you can buy bags of composted manure from garden centres now which can be incorporated into the coating mixture.