All about miniature plants and gardens indoors and out

Take the concept of dish gardens and model landscapes, but execute it with miniature garden plants. Take the outdoor plants of bonsai, but don’t dwarf them unduly or train them into unusual shapes. There you have the mixture that makes up these specialized miniature gardens, called “sink” or “trough” gardens for the old-fashioned stone sinks and horse troughs they were planted in when the fad first swept England, some thirty years ago.

Now, the old sinks and troughs are practically nonexistent, and the name is anachronistic. But I have been totally unable to dream up anything better. “Sink garden” is a specific title for a composition of plants or a landscape scene in small scale, planted in a sturdy, sink-like container, grown outdoors and used in limited ways to decorate the garden and grounds. No other phrase seems to define it.

My interest was originally aroused by the books of Anne Ashberry, England’s sink-garden specialist, and by the warm affection she has for her specialty. But it was not until I began to work with miniature plants in our Connecticut gardens—and to find out what a great variety is available—that I was inspired to plant a sink garden of my own. Originally, I was intrigued; soon, I was fascinated; now, I’m an addict. With the flimsiest excuse I’d have so many of them it would look as if our grounds had broken out with measles.

These sink gardens are not for big, burly gardeners who like cabbage roses and gaudy shrubs. They’re for connoisseurs who appreciate the minuscule perfection of a tiny plant, more effectively displayed at eye level. They’re for those who grow alpines and other difficult plants and find them less finicky under these controlled conditions. They’re for gardeners who can’t, or don’t want to, squat in the hot sun for hours, weeding or transplanting; who want the pleasure of creating gardens, but take the accompanying chores in small doses. And sink gardens are for people, like me, who simply find irresistible charm in the miniature.

If our grounds were spacious, I’d find a place where I could have a collection of sink gardens, set up on pedestals and arranged in neat rows, so I could move easily from one to the next with the watering can. But they’re probably much more ornamental and distinctive if used the way the few we have now are.

Instead of a sundial at a break in the shrubbery border, we have a sink garden set on a two-foot column of mellowed brick. Two narrow gardens outline the corner of the small patio by the front entrance. A small sink garden enlivens a shelf beside the door to the lath house. There’s one at the end of an old stone bench.

Or you can display one of these gardens against the wall at the end of a garden walk; as a centerpiece on the lawn or terrace; on top of a low wall or at the edge of a balcony; in place of an inanimate statue or urn. If possible, let the background be light and not bright-colored; neutral shades show off the plantings to best advantage.

CONTAINERS

Picturesque old sinks are obviously not available to us, and any horse troughs I’ve seen have been much too monstrous. Miss Ashberry casts her own containers of concrete (its porosity is excellent for plants), and we can do the same.

Sometimes I think the sinks and troughs look a little heavy in relation to the plantings. Certainly they are heavy, and almost impossible to move, when filled with soil. But I’ve found a goodly number of acceptable substitutes. First, of course, I shopped my favorite junk yard and found the round concrete planter and the wash-tub lid that served as containers for my first sink gardens. I also saw possibilities in a big old butter tub that could be cut down, and in a leaky birdbath.

Some of today’s building tiles are perfectly beautiful and, if shallow enough, could be fitted with a metal or wooden bottom. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Thick, old wood is another possibility. I’m thinking of some weathered planks we found at the seashore last summer; they’d make a handsome and sturdy container for a wind-blown, woodsy garden.

In designing or selecting a container, you have few rules to go by. It should be strong and weather-resistant, of course, because it is to be placed outdoors. It must have drainage holes in the bottom, so fallen rain won’t stand in it. It should be deep enough (six to eight inches) to give small trees and plants root-room. And artistically, it should be in harmony and proportion with the garden to be planted in it, not as a feature in itself, but as a subordinate element in the picture.

Unless a sink garden is to be placed on top of a wall or some other existing support, it will probably need a base to hold it two or three feet off the ground. This can be made of cement blocks, rustic brick, tile, or concrete, according to the design of the container itself.

PLANTS FOR SINK GARDENS

Unlike bonsai, these plants are not to be dwarfed, they are dwarf by nature. Miniature perennials, such as Calceolaria biflora, never top two inches, nor do some of the tiny narcissus species. Some trees have never been known to grow taller than six inches. And if you can’t find trees that are small at maturity, you can find many that grow so slowly they’ll stay in proper scale (even without pruning) for five years or more. There are miniature garden plants of all habits and shapes—stiffly erect, tufted, bush-like, sprawling, creeping, hanging, climbing—and even pinhead-size water plants for tiny pools.

Actually, there are miniature plants in every horticultural category—annuals, biennials, perennials, bulbs, shrubs, trees, aquatic plants, and wildlings—and most of them are suitable for sink gardens. You have only to select those that are in scale and sympathy with your design, and that are culturally compatible, one with the other. You can grow many of them from seeds or cuttings. Miniature perennials are available in widest variety from growers of alpine and rockery plants. Trees and shrubs can be bought by mail from suppliers of small plants for bonsai work. Native and aquatic plants are plentiful from mail-order wild-flower houses.

ACCESSORIES

The worst thing you can do with one of these little outdoor gardens is to clutter it up with little artificial props such as benches, bridges, and old oaken buckets. At all costs, avoid the cute and the trite. Practice moderation and the utmost restraint.

One prop—a hand-carved well-head, an alabaster birdbath, a lichen-covered rock—is usually plenty for any one garden. If it is handsome in its own right, the whole garden may be designed to set it off. If it’s a supporting element, play it down and let the plants stand out in the picture.

The same is true of streams, pools, walks, walls, and other miniature landscape constructions. They’re pretty and they’re fun to make; but just one too many can spoil a garden.

Naturally, any accessories and props to be used in a sink garden should be sturdy and weather-resistant. And as in any other miniature composition, proportion and scale are terribly important.

THEMES AND DESIGNS

Many of the principles and suggestions for dish gardens and model landscapes in Chapter 3 are equally applicable to sink gardens. The design needs, first, a basic idea or theme. Will the garden be formal, or informal and woodsy, or simply an artistic arrangement of living plants with or without a piece of tree stump or rock? Should it be built around an important accessory, or will one plant or a group of plants be the center of interest? Does the style of the container suggest the style of the garden to go in it?

Since a sink garden is usually planned to have some permanency, it is particularly important to plan the design in every possible detail and, if at all possible, to put the plan on paper—and in proper scale. You can tell, before it’s too late, whether a tree will be too large, a fence too high or prominent, a grouping of plants too far off balance.

When you plan the planting, keep proportion and perspective clearly in mind. If the design is to have formal balance, arrange pairs of trees, clipped hedges, straight walks, and other elements with geometric precision. If the effect is to be informal, make sure the center of interest is off-center, with a large airy area or low planting to balance it at the other side.

In crowded plantings the beauty of the form of individual plants is lost. Be sure to space them so that they have room to grow without becoming entangled with their neighbors. To blend the garden with its container, plan to have a creeper or trailer dangling over the edge.

Artistic plant compositions are arranged, like dish gardens, with outstanding accent plants, low growers often around the base, usually arranged naturally at the base of a rock or around a piece of log or stump. Colors and textures of flowers and foliage are contrasted and blended as they are in arrangements of cut flowers. Setting the plants in the empty container and rearranging them until the best effect is achieved may save shifting them about during planting.

All kinds of landscape designs can be re-created, in miniature, in sink gardens. And the scenes can change naturally with the seasons of the year. One of my informal gardens has a basic arrangement of rocks, small evergreens, and ground cover. In spring, miniature narcissus species bloom; in summer, tiny annuals such as Ionopsidium acaule and perennials such as Erodium chamaedryoides roseum; in fall, small cyclamen species.

Woodsy wild gardens can also have basic, permanent plantings—seedling evergreens, moss, foliage plants such as small ferns, rattlesnake plantain, and pipsissewa—through which spring-blooming squirrel corn, hepatica, and spring beauty can push up their flowers.

One of the most effective formal-garden designs makes good use of miniature roses as a flowering hedge in front of a high wall at the back, or as twin specimens on each side of an arch. Other formal gardens adapt the designs of the Victorian age, or the Colonial gardens of Williamsburg.

Someday I want to try an Oriental garden featuring a bonsai-style dwarf tree and planted sparsely, in the Japanese manner, with tiniest shrubs and perennials and a ground cover of fine moss or sand, and perhaps a curved bridge over a still stream.

With a suitable container you could do an outdoor desert garden. Many miniature desert plants are hardy or semihardy and would live through the winter with some protection. There are many other possible themes, and many types of plants and containers with which to carry them out.

PLANTING AND CARE

Unless you can control watering (which means keeping the garden out of the rain), make sure that the container has plenty of small holes in the bottom for drainage. And for extra insurance that drainage will be perfect, start out with a layer of pebbles or sand. A covering of burlap or sheet moss will keep soil from sifting down into it.

Soil should be light and porous, capable of holding some moisture but not too much. The standard recipe of one-third garden loam, one-third humus, and one-third sharp sand is a good basic mixture to start with. Add extra sand if the plants are succulent-like, extra humus for woodsy plants, a sprinkling of lime for plants that dislike acid soil. A slow-acting organic fertilizer such as bone meal can be mixed in, but in very small amounts. Run the mixture through a coarse sieve, to remove stones and debris.

As you place the plants, firm the soil gently around the roots. Don’t fill the container so full that the soil is level with the rim; leave an inch or so to hold water while it seeps down to the roots below. Place the ground-cover plants, and those to dangle over the edge, last. Some gardens are finished with a thin mulch of stone chips or sand, some with a carpet of moss.

Location

A sink garden planted in a real trough or sink is a mighty heavy thing, once it’s filled with soil and planted; and so may be many others. If you can place the empty container in its permanent spot and plant it there, you may save someone an aching back.

These gardens are meant to grow out in the open air, but not where searing sun and hot dry winds can dry the soil too fast and burn the plants. If the plants are all of the type that need sunlight, give them only the dappled shade of a high-branched tree or the windbreak and slight noonday shade of a low wall. Woodland plants and others that like shade can be grown in more protected spots. Naturally, the two types are not combined successfully in the same garden.

Don’t place sink gardens where they will receive the drip from eaves or an overhanging tree. Don’t set them tight up against a wall. Newly planted gardens need some special protection—a cheesecloth tent or newspaper on a temporary frame overhead—until plants are well settled in their new home.

Watering

A safe general rule is never to let the soil dry out all the way through, never to water so much that it is soggy and sour. For most plants, you can scratch into the soil surface with your fingers. If it feels moist, don’t water; if it feels dry, do. However, succulent plants should be grown drier, boggy plants more constantly moist. Frequency of watering depends upon type of plant, size and type of container, the soil, the weather—depends, in fact, upon how often each individual sink garden needs water.

Fertilizing

If a fertile soil mixture is used in the first place, and particularly if it is enriched with a slow-acting fertilizer such as bone meal, most gardens will not need extra feeding for many months after planting, often not for the first year. The point is to give the plants just enough food to keep them healthy, not enough to make them grow out of proportion to the garden.

If you see signs of malnutrition—few, small leaves with poor color; failure to bud and flower; sickly, stunted growth—feed quickly but lightly. A weak solution of organic food such as fish emulsion or liquid manure is usually recommended. Established gardens can take this light feeding once in spring when active growth begins, and once or twice during the early summer, without outgrowing their bounds.

Pruning and Grooming

Pick off all faded flowers promptly, so the plants will not exhaust themselves by setting seed. Remove any dried or fallen foliage so it will not rot and invite disease. Pinch the growing tips of plants that threaten to grow too tall and lanky. Shear hedge plants regularly and nip back creepers that spread out too far and strangle other plants. Refresh and renew any mulch or moss carpet as needed. In a garden so small, the least imperfection seems magnified.

Insects and Disease

Once a week, all summer long, my sink gardens get a quick treatment from an all-purpose aerosol bomb, used according to label directions. So far, with one exception (the mysterious plague of “inchworms” we had in the spring of 1961), this has kept insects and disease at a safe distance.

Winter Care

In mild or warm climates, sink gardens should not need any special protection in winter. But in Connecticut, the deep-freeze is so long and severe, I move my gardens to the cold frame. To make sure that the soil does not freeze and crack the container, I sometimes sink it to the rim in the soil. I’ve also packed salt hay tightly around them successfully. Or a garden could be wintered over on an unheated porch.

But most of the hardy plants used in sink gardens should not spend the winter indoors or in a warm greenhouse. They must have a cool rest period for several months to complete their natural growth cycle.