Table Top

Mini Garden

Patty’s mini-garden is designed to use the flowers from your outdoor beds a few at a time to create an evolving centerpiece.

Spring is happily upon us and with it come the daily surprises bursting from the warm soil in our gardens. Flowering trees, bright daffodils and dainty muscari are among the welcome blossoms that greet us. As your landscape changes, so can your tabletop.

The container in this arrangement is a plastic shoe box! To transform it into an earthy backdrop for your flowers, wrap the outside with sheet moss. Tie the moss in place with raffia, clear fishing line or green string.  Fill the shoe box with dry floral foam then cover the foam with moss.

Now create the hardscape elements. Place rocks in a pathway or creek bed pattern; add some tiny terra cotta pots and even a gazing ball! A small Christmas ornament makes a perfect one, but if your holiday goodies are now well out of reach you can paint a golf ball in a metallic color. Insert some twigs and branches strategically to serve as trees and shrubs.

To make the water reservoirs that will hold your fresh flowers, get about ten plastic florist water tubes (little green plastic tubes – get them from your local florist for just a few cents each). Push them into the foam until they are flush with the top. Group the tubes around your arrangement in a pattern that echoes the way flowers would grow in a garden.

You can use a turkey baster to fill the tubes with water and refresh them as necessary.

Cut or purchase small blooms and place them in the water tubes along with some small sprigs of greenery. The design can be as varied as you like and can change at your whim!

You could fill all the tubes with pansies for a cheerful monobotannical look, or use different flowers in each tube to make an English garden replica.  So, as our outdoor world is ever-changing in the spring, your mini version can also bring you new treats from Mother Nature as often as you like!