Indoor Garden

I was all excited last week to get my seeds and bulbs out.  Sadly, that excitement has now faded since all I have to look at is bare earth which seems an impossibly long way off from the garden plan I made.

Yesterday, with little else to be done, I couldn't resist playing with some garden related crafts.

Each season I collect various bits and bobs from our walks...shells, pebbles, twigs and leaves all end up in a big box near my craft desk and I vow to turn them into artistic masterpieces at the soonest opportunity.  Of course, most of them tend to linger there for months before I get around to doing anything with them, so I was pleased with myself for actually finishing not a project this weekend.

These frames are for a large blank wall in the living room.  I had originally wanted to make a living wall garden, with moss and airplants, but the moss I found was pretty ugly and I couldn't seem to find any airplants that weren't already glued into hideous cliches of stumpy logs.

I'd still love to do something like this...

Image from http://seekingthemuse.com/decor/55/ 

In the meantime though,  I found these three frames at a charity shop ages ago for 50p each.  They came with hideously twee little wooden bunnies and tulips fastened to the inside, but the top of the frames are tealight holders so I thought it was worth picking them up to see if I could strip them back to a more minimal and stylish version.

The twigs are ones that I gathered last November, but they have stayed bendy.  They were from something that looked like a shrub, and I'm not sure what they are.  I love the little buds.

I cut up some astro turf from a sample square metre that I bought and laid it on the bottom of the frame, then just bent the twigs into shape.  They still looked a bit bare so I added two twig balls that I had from a set.

The whole thing is held in place by tension,  so it will be easy to change it any time I want.

When it came to the white frame, which will hang in the centre of the two green ones, I wanted to do something different.

These greenish white roses are from a bunch I bought online.  They were the cause of my biggest case of buyers remorse ever, since they looked like beautiful silk roses online and turned out to be cheap tat that I could probably have got in the pound shop.  Glad they are finally proving useful for something!

Now I can enjoy a little bit of garden indoors, coupled with candlelight just in time for Valentine's day.

Indoor Garden House

I adore Cardens.  If you haven't discovered them yet, they are mailable postcard kits for growing miniature gardens from seeds.  Great for gifts, promotional items and wedding favours.

Their latest design is the most stunning of all.  The laser cut metal and glass structures are just gorgeous and will fit in with any decor.

Must buy a few of these for Christmas methinks!

Indoor Garden

Who says you need a greenhouse or expensive propagation kits to grow plants from seeds?  Since most of my plants will be used for guerilla gardening projects, or donated to raise money for local charities, (more on this later) I have a strong motivation to save money.

My home office has been turned into quite an indoor garden, with literally thousands of seeds tucked in cosy compost beds enjoying light from the window and a steady warmth from a radiator turned down low.

The planting containers are all recycled, making good use of take out trays, food containers and even egg cartons (ideal for larger seeds that won't need pricked out later.)  Number 1 is VERY pleased to finally see me put these saved containers to good use instead of piling up in my gardening cupboard!

As for the seeds themselves, I have also been mean with my purse strings.  This is largely because of the disappointment I have felt this Spring at the sparse display in my borders despite having spent a fair whack of cash on bulbs from catalogues.

Scrambled Egg on my Face

Image from vanmeuwen.com

 Unusual varieties of Daffodils failed to come up at all (and I was SO looking forward to the pink Replete variety) while the lovely double bloomed ones (nicknamed Scrambled Egg daffodils by my Mum) did flash their lovely heads but had such weak stems that they sent their blooms careening to the ground as soon as they flourished.

 My snowdrop bulbs sprouted a few half hearted leaves (lesson learned I will buy them in the green next year)  and the hardy Muscari practically swamped the beds with clumps of leaves before sending out single blue flower stems that look quite silly amongst all the foliage.

Cheap Seeds
So when it came to planting seeds, I wanted to see the results from going to the other extreme.  Dad came to the rescue, donating a veritable booty of seed packets from his gardening stash, however most of these past their "best before" date around the same time as Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower.

Never one to be put off however, I planted many of them, and after 7 days there are already many, many green shoots coming up to greet me each morning.

My second source of seeds was a three for £2 deal from a local discount store.  Cheap seeds=weak plants, right?  Yet many of these seeds are the varieties sold by a well known plant catalogue for four times the price.   They are going to be planted this week, and I will be sure to let you know the results, both for germination and flower production.