Creating Happy Places

November 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Because it's fun, D.I.Y. Ideas, Indoor Mini Gardens, Miniature Garden Accessories ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

A Garden For All: Creating Happy Places

Perhaps it’s the full moon. Or maybe it’s the change in weather. It could be economy. Maybe because it’s autumn. Maybe it’s the news I watched on TV this morning. Maybe it’s….

…maybe it’s just me.

Do you ever have one of those days when you don’t want to stay in your own skin?

Well that would be the kind of day where you need a happy place to go to.

Oh, Aruba! Take us now! PLEASE.

That would be nice right about now, wouldn’t it? To just to take off for a day, a week, or two, whenever you like? For some of us, that idea can be as far away as, well, Aruba.

So, let’s bring it back here. Let’s bring it to right now. Where is your happy place?

Here’s how we did a quick change from Halloween to haven, using (you guessed it) a miniature garden:

We took a centerpiece that was made for Halloween – it was a miniature greenhouse carved out of ghost pumpkin. We cut the pumpkin in half, and carved windows into the top half to make it look like a greenhouse, more or less. We planted some young starts, moss and grasses that love to be indoors, into the bottom half. We added couple of mini pumpkins, a tea light, a wee bench to sit on, and a couple of tombstones and created a very haunted mini garden for a centerpiece for the Halloween table.

And now, we want to turn that into a happy place, and pack up the Halloween décor until next year.

(Keep in mind that this is planted in a pumpkin and will only last a couple/few of weeks so go ahead and have some fun!)

We took out the tea light out and put in a wee pool with that lovely Caribbean blue color. (We are coming Aruba! Hold on!) Added miniature garden art: a rusted fish stake. Poured a beach on one side of the pond with some superfine sand. Borrowed an idea from Thryza (the Terrarium Artist in my previous blog post), and sprinkled in some tiny beads to add some sparkle and zest to the scene. Found some tiny shells  – and oh, don’t forget a log to sit on!

Ahhhh, now isn’t that better? Now, you can escape anytime you like.

Plants used:
- Variegated Boxwood, Buxus sempervirens ‘Variegata’
- Miniature Sweet Flag, Acorus gramineus ‘Pusillus’
- 2 different mosses found growing on soil.

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Thyrza’s Terrariums

October 30, 2009 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Because it's fun, Customer Interaction, Garden Art, Indoor Mini Gardens, Resources ·Tagged , , , , ,

Thyrza's Terrariums makes a surreal mini garden scene.

Thyrza's Terrariums makes a surreal mini garden scene.

Thyrza’s Terrariums

By Janit Calvo
October 30, 2009

It was a Twitter about terrariums that started it all.

An avatar on Twitter that caught my eye, of a clay-made doll-of-a-girl with curly, purple hair and a yellow dress photographed at an angle. Very fun. It made me click for more.

A new connection north of the border was instantly made, as I was checking her Web site out, while she was checking mine.

“I love your work!”

“Me, too! – Er, I mean, I love your work, too!”

 

Miniature Garden in a coffee pot makes a cool terrarium.

Miniature Garden in a coffee pot makes a cool terrarium.

Thyrza Segal lives in Vancouver, B.C. and is an avid terrarium artist. Alright, she is a gardener, but her work is that of an artist, and, hey, why can’t there be terrarium artists anyway?

When I first saw her terrariums it was love at first sight. There were magical glass scenes full of plants and moss – and these wonderfully strange creatures popping out of the foliage.

“Organic dioramas from thrift store glassware and ceramics.” What a perfect blend of “green,” too! Reusing containers AND making them into terrariums. Succulent planters, coffee pot terrariums – what is there not to like?

But it was her alien accessories that really made me smile. Eyeballs coming out of a wee fern and a dog-like creature in lime green, that were so whimsical and colorful! Plant-like figures in among the plants made of polymer clay – they just fit into her scenes so perfectly!

Surreal scenes in miniature are cinched with Thyrza's alien creatures.

Surreal scenes in miniature are cinched with Thyrza's alien creatures.

After a bit more digging (pun intended), I learned that Thyrza has a theater design background and has spent almost 10 years in film costuming. You can see how she brings the many years she has spent refining her eye for staging, colors and textures, to her terrariums. She has been called a “pop surrealist” and I love it.

Visit her Web site and have fun sifting through the wonderful images. Look under my favorite, “Alien Accessories,” Thyrza has the measurements beside the creatures so you can figure out what size you like – and they are reasonably priced from $10 to $40, depending on the size and complexity.

One of Thyrza's Girls. She is so exquisite, she can stand alone in a terrarium.

One of Thyrza's Girls. She is so exquisite, she can stand alone in a terrarium.

I recommend at least three different pieces for a complete scene – and aim for one tall one, a short one, and one in between. Do checkout her “girls” too, they are absolutely wonderful and can easily stand alone too, without the terrarium. Thyrza can also do custom colors if you have a particular setting in mind, no wouldn’t that be fun?

Check out her Web site and email your request – her shipping costs are really reasonable, too – under $5 for most orders. And only her accessories can be shipped – no plants, unfortunately. And she’s been working on her etsy store at:http://www.thyrza.etsy.com.

If you are in the Vancouver area, you can see Thyrza’s Plantscapes in person at one of several craft fairs throughout the city this coming season as these would make great gifts – check with her on the places and dates.

You can visit her studio, give her a call at 604-215-2444 or email her atthyrza@gmail.com. She does classes and groups when she can too – perfect for a garden clubs, craft clubs or for parties!

And you can follow her with me, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thyrza – after all, that’s how it all started!

Thyrza's succulent planters make great gifts for the holidays.

Thyrza's succulent planters make great gifts for the holidays.

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Garden as Metaphor: Roses will always bloom again.

October 28, 2009 at 6:23 pm · Filed under Customer Interaction, Garden as Metaphor ·Tagged , , , ,

 

Even in October, my roses are blooming again.

Even in October, my roses are blooming again.

Garden as Metaphor: Roses will always bloom again

By Janit Calvo
October 27, 2009

It has been a great pleasure, over these last few years, to meet fellow gardeners throughout the world via the Internet. Without this wonderful Worldwide Web, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.

Every so often, one of my blog posts, or my wacky product ideas attract someone who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in miniature gardening per se, but the cute idea, or the new item, shows up on their radar, and a door is opened.

Last month, I had the opportunity to speak with Lynette – a cloche collector in California. It was my Mini Moss Terrarium blog that did it, she saw the wee cloches and they were a must for her collection and thus emails started.

And Lynette always ended her emails with “Roses will always bloom again.”

My roses were still blooming in September when we were emailing back and forth, so I commented at one point, that my roses were, in fact, blooming again. I then got the unique chance to hear the story behind Lynette’s signature line.

This fit in perfectly with my ‘Garden as Metaphor’ theme that I’ve been gradually adding to over the years. This is in Lynette’s words – I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, want to even try to rewrite this.

Thank you very much, Lynette for sharing. I know this will bring hope to whomever needs it – and it’ll always be a quote to remember during the heaviest days that life can bring:

The Rose Story

My German neighbor was 4 years old during World War II and her father was fighting in France. She and her sister, who was 5, lived with their mother and their mother’s parents in Northern Germany.

There were many air raids during the conflict, which sent all the townspeople to a large building in the center of town. They would hasten to the basement of this building and wait until the ‘all clear’ sirens would blow.

On one particular night, the fighting was fierce. England was dropping bombs from planes roaring down through the area. It was night and again, the townspeople ran to the safety in the building.

My neighbor and her sister were terrified.

The town had suffered much destruction and rubble was everywhere. The explosions and screaming of bombs and planes and gunfire all around was too much to bear.

My neighbor’s mother, sensing the unbelievable trauma her little girls were experiencing, kneeled down in the darkness of the basement sanctuary, pulled her little girls close to her and with her hands cupping their tear-streaked faces, promised them that it was all going to be okay …. roses will always bloom again.

In the last three years, we lost our 20 year business, my father died, my best friend died, I had emergency surgery and my husband nearly died in January of a horrible staph infection in his knee. Forty-five days in the hospital and our beloved Chihuahua died in my arms while he was in the hospital.

That same German neighbor left a small glass vase on my doorstep filled with about 10 rosebuds and a note taped to the vase, “Roses will always bloom again.”

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Winterizing your Miniature Garden and Containers

October 23, 2009 at 4:59 pm · Filed under Garden To-Do's, Life-sized Gardening ·Tagged , ,

A few simple steps in preparing for winter can save your containers during an unexpected freeze

A few simple steps in preparing for winter can save your containers during an unexpected freeze

Winterizing Your Miniature Gardens and Containers

October 23, 2009

With this wacky weather we’ve been having, there is no telling what kind of weather we’ll get this winter. The upside is that we can react a lot faster because our gardens are miniature.

Here are some tips for the colder areas – or if the weather dips like it did here in Seattle last winter – and this will work for your other containers too, not just for miniature gardens.

When a plant is in a container, subtract up to 15 degrees off the hardiness of that plant. A potted plant is a contained micro-environment, and the roots only have the walls of the pot to protect them.

It’s this difference that we forget about, and lose our marginally hardy plants to the winter weather.

Here’s more:

~> Keep an eye on the weather reports and stockpile what you need ahead of time so you can react quickly, without hassle.

~> Plant in the biggest pot you can. Big pots don’t freeze as fast and the extra soil insulates the roots. This may be late news, but keep it in mind for future reference.

~> Plant the whole pot right in the ground for the winter, with the foliage above the earth of course, and let Mother Earth insulate the pot.

~> Wrap the whole pot in bubble wrap with a thick layer of fallen leaves between the plastic and the pot. The leaves will insulate it and the plastic will keep the leaves intact for the season. Cover this with wrapping of burlap to hide it – and add another layer of insulation – and you can have fun decorating it with eyeballs and arms for Halloween, leaf garland for Thanksgiving and twinkly lights for the winter holidays. Use the leaves as compost in your veggie bed in the springtime.

~> Move the pot beside the house or under a covered porch. This can be a temporary fix to get through a cold spell. If it is something you’d like to do for the winter season, make sure the light requirements are close to what the plant needs (Full sun plants will get leggy in the shade, shade plants will burn when that sun decides to come out.) and make sure it gets enough water throughout the winter too.

~> FOR IN-GROUND TOO: Cover the whole container garden with evergreen boughs or fallen leaves from your lawn – it’s nature’s insulation. Wait until the weather is cold enough though, you don’t want it to rot – only to protect. And be sure to take them off promptly in the spring for the same reason.

~> Choose the high-fired pots instead of the terracotta pots. The pots from Vietnam or China are high fired, fairly freeze proof, and don’t absorb the moisture as much as the terracotta ones do. It’s the moisture in the walls of the pot that freezes, expands and breaks the pot. Leave your terracotta for your annuals, empty them out now, and put them away dry for the winter.

~> Keep watering that pot! Even if it is freezing outside the contained environment will need moisture – and the cold will dry it out. This also applies for your in-ground evergreens too – check them during the dry spells to make sure the soil stays at least damp.

~> For more temperate zones with occasional freezing, get the pot up on pot feet, bricks or stones, so the water can drain and there’s nothing to really freeze and expand when the temperatures dip unexpectedly for too long.

A lot of this information came from my brother, Joel Cross of Stone Maven Landscapes, north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada – the land where your nose hairs freeze! (Which is why I’m in Seattle. Hey, thanks, Bro! ;o)

But, if all else fails and you do loose some plants, there is an upside: you get to try something new next spring!

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How to Carve a Miniature Pumpkin

October 15, 2009 at 7:58 pm · Filed under Because it's fun, D.I.Y. Ideas ·Tagged , , , , ,

Miniature Pumpkins make very cute accents for Halloween!

Miniature Pumpkins make very cute accents for Halloween!

A Garden For All: How to carve a miniature pumpkin

October 14, 2009

Here is very cute idea for Hallowe’en. Several of these can make a nice table arrangement, or they can be a little gift placed at each table setting if you’re having a sit down dinner.

It can even make an oh-too-cute hostess gift.

Carving a miniature pumpkin it almost like carving a big one – almost. There is little room for error (literately) and, because you are holding the pumpkin in hand, you’ll have to have total control over the knife, lest you might hurt yourself. This may be too meticulous for kids, as they’ll need to have full control over the knife, and work small.

The beauty of this, however, is that there is very little mess to contend with afterwards, AND you won’t mind spending a whole three minutes sorting out the seeds to roast!

For this experiment, I tried a miniature Cinderella pumpkin (Called that because it looks like her chariot that she went to the ball in) and a wee sugar pumpkin (No, I won’t be making a pumpkin tart out of it! Stop that!).

Here are some more pointers I’ve come up with:

- No.1 RULE: Always, always be mindful of the “line of cut” when using any sharp tool. Whether it’s huge and moving, like a chainsaw, or small and sharp, like an Exacto knife, you still can do some serious damage if you are not paying attention to where the blade might end up.

The “line of cut” is where the blade is being cut along and towards, AND it is where it is where the blade might slip by accident.

When carving the pumpkin material, sometimes the blade gets “stuck” and you may apply more pressure to move it forward. When the material suddenly releases the blade, it will move fast, and this is where you can get hurt. Always err on the side of safety and keep your hands and fingers of the opposite hand, on the backside of the pumpkin, away from the line of cut. Always.

Keep the pumpkin's face simple - there is just enough room for fun!

Keep the pumpkin's face simple - there is just enough room for fun!

- Hold the pumpkin firmly at all times. Brace it against your body for more control – but wear a heavy apron, a thick garden jacket or a several layered rags because if the knife slips, you’ll cut yourself and your clothes. (This lesson was learned the hard way, in first year wood studio class in art college, with a pair of brand new jeans.)

- Cut the top off as you would a regular pumpkin, trim the inside of the lid and scoop out the guts. I like to shave the walls down a bit more where the face is going to be, to make it a bit thinner. You can do this with a teaspoon because it’s so small.

- Because there isn’t a lot of room to cut into, I used a grapefruit knife that is serrated on both sides so when I sunk it into the flesh, it would cut where I wanted it too. I roughed in the major lines and didn’t poke the pieces through until I was ready.

- Halfway through carving the face, hold the pumpkin wall with your fingers inside and outside the wall, to brace the cut part while you finish into the rest of the face. This is so you don’t tear the pumpkin or smush in the face by accident.

- I trimmed up the lines and detailed the teeth with a sharp Exacto knife after I roughed it in with the grapefruit knife. I shaved the inside of the cutouts too, to make a cleaner view when the pumpkin is lit.

Make a hole in the bottom of the mini pumpkin for the fake tealight.

Make a hole in the bottom of the mini pumpkin for the fake tealight.

- I used a fake tealight to light it. They are great, the on/off switch is on the bottom – and they flicker too! Hold the tealight and the pumpkin bottom to bottom, and trace around it on the pumpkin. Cut out the hole and try not to make it any bigger than it needs to be. The pumpkin will shrink over time and it won’t be able to hold the tea light where you want it.

Raise or lower the fake tealight to light the face where you want it.

Raise or lower the fake tealight to light the face where you want it.

- Depending upon the size of the pumpkin, the tealight can be raised or lowered to get the maximum light through the face. The whole pumpkin sits on the tealight.

- Happy Hallowe’en!!

Way too cute Halloween idea - for centerpieces, place holders or a hostess gift!

Way too cute Halloween idea - for centerpieces, place holders or a hostess gift!

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Growing Gaps

October 14, 2009 at 5:48 pm · Filed under Life-sized Gardening, Miniature Plants, Resources ·Tagged , , ,

The Jean's Dilly Dwarf Alberta Spruce, majestic in a miniature garden, comes in a 4 inch pot.

The Jean's Dilly Dwarf Alberta Spruce, majestic in a miniature garden, comes in a 4 inch pot.

A Garden For All: Growing gaps

One inch to 6 inches per year? Huh? Why can’t they decide?

We often see this kind of information on a plant tag at the nursery, or in plant listings online, the growth rate that differs as much as one foot sometimes.

Why don’t we know how big it grows? What’s up with that?

This kind of growth rate information is common on plants that are shipped by the larger nurseries throughout states and Canada. Instead of creating a dozen different tags for each climate zone the plant can be grown in, they group the rates together on the one tag to save time and money.

I found this out when I started mailing plants, years ago through Ebay. A woman from the East Coast engaged me after purchasing some plants and was asking about the growth rates, as she wanted only true miniatures for her collection. I sent her some wee conifers and signed off for the season.

I got back in touch with her in the fall, only to learn that the wee conifers grew too fast that summer.

“But, they were slow-growing dwarfs, about 1.5 inches per year?” I queried.

“In Seattle they are. In North Carolina, they aren’t!” She said.

Previously, I had only sold at shows and markets around the greater Seattle area, so there wasn’t any need to hold on to that kind of information – unless I wanted to move to North Carolina, I guess. But with selling online I had to quickly get an understanding of the zones, throughout the country, in order to help my customers.

Over the years of doing classes and teaching I’ve also learned that this also why the word “Dwarf” irks people.

“Hey, Janit. See that pine growing over the rooftop of my house? That’s a dwarf too!”

Dwarf is only a growth rate and while your big pine tree may match the height of your house at maturity, it is still a dwarf version of one that would be well more than 100 feet tall and found in our natural forests.

The official growth rate for dwarf is 1 inch to 6 inches per year. That’s a half of a foot. That’s a lot, especially if you’re into miniature gardening.

The Jean’s Dilly Dwarf Alberta Spruce grows 1 inch to 3 inches per year. Here in cool Seattle (ignoring this past summer), that Dwarf Alberta Spruce might grow 1.5 inches per year. In a climate with a longer and hotter summer, it will grow closer 3 inches per year.

So, you can roughly gauge where you would be on a scale of 1 to 6 inches, by thinking about your climate compared to the rest of the states and Canada collectively.

Still keeping the Dwarf Alberta Spruce as an example:

- 1 inch is in the coldest region, Cold Hardy Zone 4, or -30F, Lower part of the upper States.

- 6 inches in the warmest zone, Cold Hardy Zone 6, or 0F. Lower part of middle states and up the West Coast.

Long cold winters, short, hot summers, 1 inch per year. Shorter winters and longer summers further down south would be 6 inches per year.

I hope this is of help to some. And happy planting season!

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Railroad gardening – A quiet hobby

October 10, 2009 at 6:21 pm · Filed under Customer Interaction, railroad gardening ·Tagged , , ,

Al Ward's Railroad Garden in Florida

Garden Railroading is miniature gardening with a different theme running through it - literately! This is from Al Ward in Florida.

A Garden For All: Railroad gardening – A quiet hobby.

October 7, 2009

It was my first “layout.”

I was invited to a meeting of the Puget Sound Garden Railway Society several years ago, and asked to bring some of my plants and accessories to show them what I did. It was a bright and sunny day when I ventured down, southeast of the Seattle city limits, to see what my new friend was on about.

“Watch out, step over the track, there!” was one of the first things I was told.

The voice belonged to the owner, who had set up a railroad in his backyard – and his backyard wasn’t a small one. I looked down, then up, and saw a lot of track going every which way.

A train meandered by at my feet.

A “layout” is the insider’s term for any model railroad track setup.

The train track was on a shelf, built right onto the fence, and went all the way around the yard. Further down, on the far side of the grass, the track moved toward the center of the backyard, through the vegetable garden, around another bed, and then looped around the pond.

Then over to the back porch area where it kissed the steps leading into the garden, followed the track in between the bushes and the stair, then, somehow, met up again with the fence-shelf to do it all over again.

It was really a sight to see.

I call railroad gardening the grandfather of miniature gardening (Bonsai is the godfather). Creating miniature living realistic garden scenes has been dated back to 1850’s when the railroad – the life-sized railroad – was being built.

It's official, Al has too much fun. His layout is huge - complete with towns and a resort too!

It's official, Al has too much fun. His layout is huge - complete with towns and a resort too!

Scenes and dioramas of how the train would look rolling through the landscape were created to sell the idea to the multitudes of new Americans across the country. A salesman sample, in other words.

And, in my humble opinion, this laid some of the groundwork for our beloved hobby of miniature gardening.

That day was fun. I learned a lot about railroading. I learned about the “steamers,” the people who just wanted to lay some track and run some trains. And there were the “electrics” – I hope I remembered that name right – those who wanted to have a landscape for their trains to run through.

They spoke of mountains made out of concrete, 50-foot tall trees – in miniature of course, bridges and running rivers. One train chugged around the fence, then another. There was a woman in an engineer’s cap.

Sigh, so much to play with, so little time.

And every so often, I get a call from a railroad gardener. Pleased that there is an overlap of interest in my products and my plants. This time I was fortunate enough to come across a conductor that likes to share. The above pictures are from Al down in Florida.

Thanks, Al! Looking forward to the next update!

All aboard!

“I hear that train a-comin’ – comin’ around the track! Clickity, clickity, clickity, clack.”

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Bringing the outside in.

October 8, 2009 at 10:48 pm · Filed under Garden To-Do's, Indoor Mini Gardens ·Tagged , , , , ,

Your mini garden can be brought in for a centerpiece for the holidays - if you stage it right. Pot is 18 inches wide.

Your mini garden can be brought in for a centerpiece for the holidays - if you stage it right. Miniature garden above is 18 inches wide.

A Garden For All: Bringing the outside in

One of the joys of miniature gardening is that you really don’t have to know a lot to start. And, this can work the other way around, it is a great way to begin learning about gardening.

Baby steps, as they say.

Here is a brief primer on the difference between indoor and outdoor plants. This is a popular question that every beginner eventually asks.

Indoor plants are, for the most part, tropical plants that want to stay 60 degree F or above all year round.

In general, if you bring an outdoor plant inside, it will think it is the summer growing season all the time, and grow itself to death. The dry air from our forced, indoor heating, plus the 16 odd hours of supposed “daylight” from the indoors, will put unwanted stress on the outdoor plant that would normally prefer a cool, humid, winter-like environment.

When a plant doesn’t get the rest it needs (like going dormant in winter) it will get stressed out – just like us. When the plant’s defense system is compromised and weakened, it leaves the plant open to pest and diseases.

However, we have ways around this, if you would like to decorate your outdoor miniature garden, and use it as a centerpiece for Halloween or the holidays.

Here are some pointers for using your outdoor mini garden inside:

- It can be brought inside for a day, up to three days maximum.
- After the three days, the garden should be placed outside to rest, and watered thoroughly until it drains out of the bottom.
- The time spent outside should be greater than the time the garden spends inside.
- The soil should remain at least damp, moist is better (while inside to keep it’s roots cool) and the plants should be misted almost daily when inside too (think about all that hot air from the furnace drying out the leaves).
- Avoid direct sunlight when it is inside, as it may scorch the plants. Use a sheer curtain or move it out the way for the hours that sun beams sideways into the windows.
- Never move a miniature garden from a warm room to the frosty outdoors, or from a shaded room to full, hot sun without first staging it.
- Stage your miniature garden in the garage, or on a covered porch for a least a couple of days, to help it adapt and avoid extreme climate changes – especially in November and December. (Like you would stage your living Christmas tree.)
- And use this graduation method for bringing your garden inside or outside. Remember to avoid the extreme climate changes.

For more indoor mini garden ideas, please see my other blogs: http://minigardener.wordpress.com/category/indoor-mini-gardens/.

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Janit’s Laboratories, Ink.

September 24, 2009 at 6:20 pm · Filed under Because it's fun ·Tagged , , , ,

Experimenting with Miniature Moss Terrariums. It takes about two hours to rejuvenate the moss from a completely dried state.

Experimenting with Miniature Moss Terrariums. It takes about two hours to rejuvenate the moss from a completely dried state.

Janit’s Laboratories, Ink.

September 23, 2009

I often feel like a mad scientist. Trying out insanely silly things that just might work together.

In art college, my thesis project was an interactive, computer controlled kinetic painting. I applied electronics and motors to painted panels. Designed a software program to turn the motors in either direction. All activated by a digital scale disguised as a platform to turn it on for random amounts of time. The idea was to give each viewer a completely different, and individual, experience of the painting.

I know, whacky. The painting department didn’t like the electronics, and the electronic department didn’t like the painting aspect. I was truly onto something.

But, I guess that was part of the reason that I got into the business of miniature gardening in the first place. It was because there wasn’t a book in the library (yes, it’s been that long ago) on “How to Start a Miniature Garden Business.”

Heck, there weren’t even any Web sites that referenced anything remotely like it. When I Googled “miniature garden,” all I would get would be an artificial garden or two attached to dollhouses. Nothing living, no leaf, soil or plant to be found.

Not even garden railroads or fairy gardens. Where was everyone?

So, I started experimenting back then and came up with an number of fun and interesting solutions to our everyday miniature garden problems, and continue to do so today. Ten years of solid research. When was my last vacation, anyway?

So, the other day, I was finally convinced that my latest experiment was ready for the public eye. I twittered it a couple of times and put in on the Two Green Thumbs Miniature Garden Facebook page and asked everyone what they thought of my new miniature terrarium idea: too cute, or too small?

The consensus: One Depends, five Likes, one Too Cute and one Too Small. (You can see my feedback rate isn’t very good!)

Hmmmm, and the winner is?

Maybe I’ll go back to the drawing board.

Miniature Moss Terrariums. It’s bound to catch on somehow.

Oh, and by the way, “How to Start a Miniature Gardening Business” will be a chapter in my upcoming ebook, “How to Garden in Miniature.” Stay tuned or join my mailing list through my Web site.

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Award Winning Gardener Goes Miniature

September 19, 2009 at 5:28 pm · Filed under Customer Interaction, Garden Art, Garden To-Do's, Life-sized Gardening ·Tagged , , , ,

You can see fellow miniature gardener, Patty Steele-Smith, and her gardens, at Edmond's Studio Art Tour this weekend.

You can see fellow miniature gardener, Patty Steele-Smith, and her gardens, at Edmond's Studio Art Tour this weekend.

A Garden For All: Award winning gardener goes miniature

September 18, 2009

The Northwest is home to many creative talents of all types, whether you’re baking bread or blowing glass, but there is still a difference in being artistic and being a true artist.

I’ve had the pleasure in recent years to get to know one of the true ones, a customer turned friend, Patty Steele-Smith.

Patty’s work encompasses many different forms: two and three dimensional sculpture, ceramics, art cards, installation gardens, and, you must have seen this one coming, miniature gardens.

Patty is an award-winning gardener for her life-sized gardens. She has won the Edmonds in Bloom award since 2002, The Golden Scoop Award from the Pacific Northwest Gardens in 2006, and the Edmonds in Bloom Garden Tour in 2007.

You can see her work on her website and this weekend up in Edmonds, too – but first, let me tell you a bit more about who she is and how we met.

A couple of years ago, Patty called me up one day asking about my mini garden classes. I didn’t have any that were scheduled, and she pressed about a one-on-one class. Sure! Why not? I never taught a solo class and she sounded like a keen learner, so we booked a day to meet.

My goal, with any class, is to give the student(s) as many ideas as would fit in their heads. I did the same with Patty that day, and she drank them in like water. It was a fun afternoon spent together as I told all about the plants, the processes, and accessories, while we built a little miniature garden for her to take home.

Little did I know how much she would take to the idea. I often wonder about the people that I’ve taught – if they are still practicing the art of miniature gardening, or just did that one in class.

Since that day, Patty has taken the miniature garden idea and applied her own style and sense to her creations. As an avid student of Feng Shui, and a lover and traveler, of Asia, her miniature worlds have a calmness about them that can instantly transport you – you don’t really want to stand on that bridge, or sit on that bench and meditate, because you are already there.

Now you can checkout Patty’s miniature gardens, and her other art on her Web site at: http://www.steele-smith.com. Also, be sure the look under “Installation-Environment” on the top menu on her Web site where she has pictures of her past, award-winning gardens.

And more good news: Patty will be showing her most recent miniature gardens – and her garden and artwork – at this weekend’s Art Studio Tour in Edmonds, Wash. this weekend, Sept. 19th and 20.

See you there!

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