DECORATIVE CONTAINERS, DISH GARDENS, AND MODEL LANDSCAPES

House plants are usually considered more or less lasting indoor decorations. But they can also be used the same as cut flowers for temporary and changeable displays, and then, like cut flowers, can be discarded when they begin to fade. They cost less and last much longer than bouquets, but because they’re temporary decorations, they cause less worry and require less care than the permanent inhabitants of window sills or artificially lighted gardens.

That sounds rather heartless, I know. But it’s a defense I’ve built up—and a perfectly logical one—against the wails of those who take beautiful florists’ plants, place them on dark mantels, or in other thoroughly unsuitable growing areas, neglect them wholeheartedly, and then “can’t make them grow.” How many people do you know who buy lovely Christmas begonias, poinsettias, or cyclamen for the holidays and expect them to bloom the following season?

Honestly, I can’t see any reason why plants must be immortal, why they can’t refresh and beautify the home as long as they remain healthy and attractive, and not one minute longer, and then be discarded. I do object to stringy, leafless stems of expiring philodendron, dried-up dish gardens, or any plant or combination of plants that has become undecorative because it is dying. Actually, some florists’ plants, such as greenhouse primulas and calceolarias, are annuals that come into full bloom only once, and having had their big moment are supposed to die peacefully afterward.

Do I treat my plants in the house so very cruelly? Well, no ... not exactly. My budget includes no allotment for florists’ fripperies. I have a different system, and I have a constant supply of healthy plants to use for indoor decoration. My plants spend most of their lives in growing quarters where cultural conditions are good—in bright windows, in the window greenhouse, or on our small sun porch. They are brought in for a few days (never more than a week), then quickly returned to their more healthy, healthful homes. Having done their duty, they go back to grow and prosper. I do this with single potted plants, placed in attractive containers, with dish gardens, model landscapes, and combinations of plants. They are beautiful and charming as table centerpieces, mantel ornaments, displays for the coffee table, shadow box, or bookcase shelf.

PLANT-AND-CONTAINER COMPOSITIONS

In the past few years my preoccupation with miniature plants has led to some pleasurable rummaging and shopping for containers in which to place them to make compositions for a bedside or telephone table, for the narrow window sill above the kitchen sink, and for the small bric-a-brac shelf in the foyer.

As any flower-arrangement artist knows, small-scale compositions are often more intricate and more difficult than full-scale affairs—every detail is subject to separate scrutiny. However, patience, good taste, and an artistic flair will unite a plant and a container with an affinity that looks casual, even accidental, but actually is cunningly contrived. Container and plant become one picture—neither outshining the other—the container setting off the plant, and not sacrificing its own importance.

People who are intrigued with these miniature compositions usually collect containers in wide variety. Some of them are even made for the express purpose of holding plants—from wood, bronze, copper, all sorts of chinaware, glass, and ceramics. But the containers that give the most fun are those made for entirely different purposes. I’ve seen tiny bird cages, little woven baskets, glass lamp shades, odd-ball ash trays, punch cups, unusual tea or coffee cups, soup tureens, and even an ancient Buick hub cap which a little girl “borrowed” from her father’s collection of automobile antiquities. Some gourds are just the right size and shape, and with a nice wartiness, to lend enchantment for growing plants. Our cat keeps us well supplied with the tins in which his food is sold—spray them with paint and they are ideal for many plants. Some cocktail or champagne crystal looks precious with miniature vines drooping over the side.

Once for our P.T.A. fair I collected a dozen or so unmatched liquor glasses, put a half-inch of soil in the bottoms, and planted tiny Sinningia pusilla. They sold immediately, with people wanting more. A plant sale at such an affair is a rather convincing test of popularity, and whether you have created a good arrangement.

Another favorite I have discovered for unusual containers is Cymbalaria muralis, the nostalgic Kenilworth ivy. I planted some in a small strawberry jar. Look at the jar from the right angle and it resembles a round-cheeked dwarf with a sparse green wig. I wish I could remember where I bought that jar—so many friends have wanted one. The “pawnbroker’s” planter cost five cents in a local junk shop. I also planted it with ivy.

Inexpensive hanging containers and wall brackets for miniatures are available in a wide variety at five-and-dime stores. But hanging baskets are not so easy to handle, as they must be suspended from wire or screwed to the wall. I’ve seen a doll’s hat used delightfully, and also some nice little woven baskets. Or try anything of metal or ceramic if it has a lip to hold a wire or chain—or a two-handled consommé bowl; or a soup ladle with its handle fastened to the wall. You can easily punch holes in most plastic containers—and without cracking—by using a red-hot awl or old-fashioned ice pick.

Occasionally I have seen props or accessories used in these miniature plant-and-container compositions that were successful, but only occasionally were they in perfect scale and harmony. More frequently, the silk, wood, or ceramic butterfly, bee, or bird is an unnatural and disturbing intrusion.

Be careful when you water plants in decorative containers. If possible keep the plant in its original pot so it can be lifted from the container and taken to the sink, where excess water will drain away. Otherwise, hold off on your watering until you are positive the plant won’t wait any longer; then stop before the soil gets soggy and wet. Excess water, trapped by a container, can cause roots to rot, in fact will promote rot in most cases.

Be daring, be creative, be artistic when planning container projects and arrangements. If a fat little fern looks right for a teacup, let the cup be squat and fat; or let it be fluted gracefully and flared up to the delicate frond-fans. If a miniature orchid looks like a gem without a case, set it on pebbles in a clear crystal bowl; or perhaps invert a dome-shaped watch glass over it. If a succulent makes you think of a tough little gnome, for goodness sake don’t plant it in one of those grotesqueries which is the hump of a camel’s back or a cavity along the spinal column of a ceramic cat. (Remember how ridiculous a Venus stomach clock looks.) Use a little imagination. Perhaps you have something at hand—a droll bucket, a miniature fishing creel, a butter tub. Interesting containers make interesting compositions if you use good taste and imagination. Try to achieve the quality and feeling that the plant and container were “made for each other.”

DISH GARDENS

A dish garden is the combination of a group of living plants and the container holding them. It should be designed and planted with artistry and originality, but without artificiality. Each dish garden should look distinctive—certainly without any resemblance to the ones which florists seem to make by formula. It should be neither crowded with too many plants, nor cluttered with accessories or small ornaments. It should be eye-catching but not brazen, harmonious but not dull, unusual in some manner and yet comfortably natural.

Like cut-flower compositions, dish gardens are arranged so that plant and container together complete an artistic design. And like any artistic design, these gardens follow (or have a good reason for not following) certain basic principles:

Plants and container blend into one pleasing picture.

Elements of the design interlock, overlap, or otherwise hang together.

The number of elements is limited by restraint and good taste.

All parts of the design are in pleasing relative proportion.

There is one focal point, or center of interest.

If the design has formal balance, the focal point is in the center, with elements of equal weight at the sides.

For informal balance, the focal point is off-center, with heavier elements to balance it.

A design becomes fluid, rhythmic, with the dynamic use of line, and with pleasing contrast of colors, textures, and structural forms.

Of first importance, of course, is the container. It should be of proper size, shape, texture, color, and mood for the plants that will fill it. Rustic pottery is suitable for desert cacti and other succulents; glazed white, or lightly tinted, pottery for dainty flowering plants; copper, pewter, wooden bowls for an arrangement of heavy, masculine-looking foliage plants.

Containers can be of any shape—round, square, rectangle, triangle, ellipse, irregular. If possible they should be at least three inches deep so there is space in which to pack the roots of your plants. And they should not make themselves conspicuous with bold ornament, texture, or color. Plain design and subdued colors bring out the beauty of the plants.

Very few artificial accessories look well in a dish garden; but natural garden or landscape features such as interesting rocks or bits of old wood are often quite successful.

Before you begin to plant a dish garden, set the plants (in their pots) in the container, and then shift them around until they begin to look right. This will give you a rough idea of how an arrangement will turn out. For formal balance, set the tallest or most striking plant in the center, with some low ones nestled around its base. For informal balance, set the accent plant in one corner of a rectangle and let a large expanse of unadorned sand, gravel, or ground cover spread out toward the diagonal corner.

Turn a sharply curved leaf or branch so it falls against a straight up-and-down plant. Play rough foliage against smooth; feathery against solid; bright colors against dull; pattern against plain leaf. Try lifting out one plant to see if the effect is cleaner. To blend plants with the container, let a creeping or hanging plant fall down over the edges. These beforehand experiments will help you avoid having to shift plants later, during the actual planting.

Although not strictly dish gardens, there are some attractive variations that can be composed without benefit of soil, or of a dish to hold it. In the pockets of a small piece of smooth, silky old root, or driftwood, tuck osmunda fiber (orchid-potting material) for the roots of epiphytic (air growing) plants—most are bromeliads. Terrestrial (soil growing) plants, such as the miniature begonia, are best in sphagnum moss. Or try tiny orchids; some will creep slowly over the surface of the wood. Fasten the plants firmly in place with inconspicuous fine florists’ wire. This will hold the plants until their roots penetrate the fiber and attach themselves to the soft wood. If you supply liquid fertilizer at regular intervals, the plants will grow normally. Water by dunking plants and log in a pan or the sink. Feed by adding soluble fertilizer to the water.

Plants will often grow from cavities and crevices in rocks. If the rock is “limy,” stick to lime-tolerant plants. Tufa, if you can find it, is especially malleable for gardens like these. It is soft and porous, easily cut and shaped, and with ready-made cavities to hold roots and small amounts of soil or moss. It is perfectly acceptable to acid-loving plants.

Conch shells, and another large shell of a similar type which we used to find on the beach—the sort kiddies hold to their ears when playing the game of “listening-to-the-sea”—offer interesting possibilities. Pack the cavity with moist sphagnum moss and plant with several smallish plants. Water with extreme care, and fertilize only slightly. Almost any moisture-compatible foliage plant that is available will live and grow this way for months.

MODEL LANDSCAPES

Although these indoor gardens also follow the rules of good design, the result is a different effect. Montague Free once called them “an idealization in miniature of an outdoor scene.” They are not arranged to give an artistic impression, but to re-create some part of the out-of-doors on a small scale. Their charm lies in their diminutiveness, intricate detail and, often, in their whimsy.

The elements are: container; tiny plants (for the purist, all must be living) to represent trees, shrubs, grass, and flowers; and props Or accessories such as miniature pools, fences, and other landscape or architectural features. I suppose rocks would be called accessories, too.

Each garden should have a theme, and all elements should be in harmony with the theme and help to carry it out. For example, it’s difficult to combine buoyant hybrid pansies with shy wild flowers. A contemporary garden is best in a container with clean lines, but an old-fashioned garden is fine in a platter with high fluted edges. A desert scene calls for a container that’s bare and stark. A white plastic trellis doesn’t belong in a woodland scene. And please, no green bath towels for grass.

Visualize your garden first—sketch the plan on paper. If you can draw it to scale, it will help in the selection of container, plants, and props. It is crucial that each element should be in proper proportion to all others. One element not in scale can ruin the entire effect.

In some gardens a plant or small group of plants will be the object of interest; in others it may be a particularly charming and important feature such as a rustic bridge or a shrine. In gardens of moderate size or less, one feature is usually sufficient, and not more than two in larger ones. Select your main feature first, place it, and make sure all other elements are in scale. For example, a fence should not be more than one and a half inches high under a tree of six inches.

The variety of plants, props, and containers from which you can select can be as wide as your enthusiasm and ingenuity want to make it. Here are a few suggestions.

Tree

Upright plant with a single stem-trunk, foliage at the top, usually taller than it is wide. If the tree is to be the object of interest, look for plants with character rather than symmetry—bent, twisted, gnarled trunk; interesting, lopsided shape; especially lacy foliage; tipsy tendency to lean. There are a number of useful house and greenhouse plants, and more to be found in the woods and fields. For deciduous trees, it is often permissible to use twiggy branches stuck in the soil. I find leafless pieces of mountain laurel very effective.

Shrubs

Upright plants of bushy habit and branching. You’ll find many suitable house plants and some in the wild.

Hedge

Tiny-leaved, bushy plants that can be set close together and clipped to shape. The tiniest boxwoods will also do if they are carefully thinned and each extra leaf is removed separately.

Flowering and Foliage Plants

Miniature house plants are best for these indoor gardens, although you can achieve temporary success with some annuals like alyssum.

Climbing and Trailing Plants

These are needed for training over walls, but even more necessary for planting at the container’s edge so they will fall over and softly blend the garden and the container.

Ground Cover

A cover for bare spots in the garden—get sheet moss from the woods. Or plant grass seed and keep it mowed with sharp scissors. Use your own ingenuity. You may very likely come up with something more appropriate.

Urns

Use thimbles, thumb-pots, miniature vases.

Pools

These can be built with Sakrete or plaster of Paris. Or sink a sardine can—painted blue-green—an ash tray, soap dish, or plastic cheese container.

Paths

A path should always be going somewhere, preferably to the point of interest. Make paths with sand, fine gravel, small pebbles, perlite. If your garden is a formal one, make cement sidewalks with Sakrete. (Please, we have no financial interest in Sakrete—don’t even know who makes it—but have always found it a most useful material around our gardens for patching, fixing, and repairing.)

Bridges, Fences, and Gates

Here is another chance for your personal ingenuity—and the more ingenuity you use the greater will be your pride when the job is done. Use matchsticks, toothpicks, balsa wood (it is available in hobby shops, but you can very likely snitch a few pieces from some model airplane the kiddies are making). In my office I get coffee from the corner drugstore, each container having a stirring stick. I save those sticks. It is wonderful what one can do with them—picket fences and the like. A little whittling is all that is necessary.

Rocks

Please, don’t use chunks of broken concrete. Hunt around for smooth, interesting specimens, eroded and rounded stones of the correct size. If you happen to come upon one with a lichen, you have a real prize.

There are as many themes for these gardens in miniature as there are outdoor scenes—cultivated or natural—in the world. The only necessity is, once you have decided on a plan, stay with it. See that every plant and prop you use is in harmony. See that every plant has the same cultural requirements—especially if your garden is to be a lasting thing. Here are some general ideas:

Formal Garden

This is probably the easiest to execute, chiefly because it is based on perfectly mathematical balance. The plan is basically geometric—a rectangle with a birdbath in the exact center; walks straight and precise; pairs or quadruplets of plants that are identical in size and shape; hedges that are neatly trimmed. How about trying something different?—an Old World herb garden; perhaps a scene from Colonial Williamsburg; or something from the Elizabethan age.

Informal Garden

Re-create your own garden, or something you hope to have around your house and grounds. It will help you to visualize it in advance. Get a container the shape and proportions of your lot—do a planting with the lawn you want, build up patios and terraces. Build a model of your house and duplicate the plantings you want on a miniature scale. This sort of garden will give you a real thrill.

Old-fashioned Garden

I wonder if you ever had a wonderful grandfather and grandmother—I wonder if they had a trim house with a picket fence—white of course. If you did, how about trying to duplicate it. If you didn’t, do a little dreaming. Dream about what you would like to see—picket fence, billows of bloom from flower beds, climbing things on the walls and fences. Please, let yourself go and improvise à la dream. Next to your own home, I can think of nothing more satisfying than trying to duplicate an old-fashioned garden in the manner of that wonderful past generation. Use your imagination. You’ll be happy that you did.

Contemporary Garden

The central figure could be a miniature vase, to represent an urn, at the edge of a square or rectangular pool. Small boxes can be made like redwood planters. To be purely functional, use gravel or paving instead of grass. Plant sparsely and with an eye for modern design.

Oriental Garden

Here is a garden that can fool you with its simplicity. It calls for fewer plants, more minutely perfect props, figurines, stones, and moss. It may be built around a pool with a Japanese bridge. Outwardly, it looks so easy and simple, but it isn’t. Just get one feature out of proportion and you will be unhappy. Remember, the Oriental artist is a person of great perfection, one with thousands of years of artistry behind him. Before attempting an Oriental garden, better get some good photographs or drawings. It will help you achieve a good picture and you will have a lasting satisfaction. Good luck.

Tropical Garden

This one should be lush with tropical creepers and climbing tropical trees, as pictured in the color section of this book. The container is a bowl from an overhead light fixture—the sort that used to hang above the dining-room table. (It cost ten cents in a junk shop.) The back is a masonry wall, made of pebbles and Sakrete, as is the irregular pool. Paint your pool blue-green. Since your plants will very likely require acid soil, separate the construction material from the soil by strong plastic.

Desert Garden

Little but cacti and kindred succulents can grow here, and sparsely at that. Sedum multiceps, little Joshua tree, has a picturesque tree-like character. Use a suitable soil mixture completely covered with a layer of desert sand, or very fine gravel. Build a dune perhaps. Or make an oasis with a few palms around a pool—an irregularly shaped pool like one might see in a mirage. How about a few strands of grass—maybe not quite in tune with the setting but it might be considered as bamboo. A little faking is permissible.

Rock Garden

This usually calls for building up a rocky slope supported by hardware cloth in the rear and lined with moss to keep the soil from falling through. Follow good rock-gardening rules—rocks of the same kind but of varying shapes, with their layers, or strata, running horizontal. At the base of the slope you might contrive a small pool overflowing into a plastic-limed stream. Make a rustic gate and bridges with evergreen twigs wired and glued together.

Woodland Garden

Naturalistic arrangements of woodsy plants, rocks, moss, fallen logs. Seedling evergreens are fine. Artificial props are out.

Meadow Garden

A gate might open through a split-rail fence to a winding, foot-trodden path through a field of waving grass and flowers. At the back leafy trees line the edge of the imagined cow pasture.

PLANTING AND CARE

Most containers for dish gardens and model landscapes are watertight. That is wonderful for any furniture on which they might be placed, but not so good for the plants. There is that eternal danger of overwatering. Roots rot when they stand in mud or water. In tight-bottomed containers it is wise to start with a thick drainage layer—pieces of broken flower pots, pebbles, brick, coarse sand, or even small pieces of charcoal. That gives the excess water a place to go. Cover this bottom layer with burlap or moss to keep the soil from sifting down.

The soil mixture should be suitable for the type of plant which is going to live in it—acid or alkaline, sandy or humus-rich—and should be moist—not muddy—at planting time. One at a time take your plants from their individual pots, set them in place, and make the soil firm enough to support them. Add dangling-edgers and ground cover last. Mist the finished garden with a fine spray of water, thus washing off any dirt and refreshing the foliage. Set the garden in a shaded, protected spot until the plants have recovered from transplanting shock.

Watering these gardens can be tricky. The soil may feel dry on the surface and yet be boggy underneath. Find a small bare spot where you can insert the handle of a spoon or a fork. Dig down to the bottom to make sure that water is really needed. And water with the greatest of care—enough to moisten the soil, but not enough to leave water standing in the bottom. No puddles, please.

Now supposing your hand has slipped—the hand holding the watering-pot—and you have overdone it. If the planting will allow, put the container on its side for a half-hour or so. But, please be careful—actually, I shudder to give you this piece of advice. I’m afraid you might find your creation out of its container and a muddy mess in the kitchen sink. All right, here is something else you can do; dig a hole in a bare spot—a small hole the size of a pencil and in the deepest part of your garden. Suck up the extra moisture with a pipette until the hole is dry. What, no pipette in your garden kit, then try a medicine dropper. No medicine dropper either—try a soda straw, but you had better be nimble or you will get a taste of dish garden. They don’t taste as good as they look.

If your garden is only a temporary decoration, you have given it your all and that is all the care it needs. But I feel you are going to love it so much you’ll want to keep it growing as long as possible. That changes the rules considerably. Place it, not on the coffee table, but in a window where it will get the light and sun the plants need, and where the temperature and humidity are to their liking. (Specific recommendations and plant preferences will be given in Chapters 6 and 16.) Hardy outdoor plants should be kept as cool as possible. You might set them in a cool room, or on an unheated porch, at night and bring them in only for the day. Fertilizing is usually not necessary, except when roots are severely crowded or you are trying to force a plant to bloom.

Keep the garden immaculately clean and neat. Remove faded flowers and tired leaves. Trim those plants that have a tendency to grow too large or straggly. It might be smart to remove any that refuse to stay within proper size. Train your climbers and creepers as you want them to grow. Keep your pools filled with clean fresh water. Mist foliage daily to keep it fresh and dust-free.

The dish gardens and model landscapes you plant this way are easy to care for, but those ones from a florist may present some problems. Now let’s be fair to florists—their gardens and landscapes are turned out on a commercial basis in order that they may make money. (Outside of a few fancy floral outfits, none of them gets rich, particularly when one considers the long hard hours they spend on the job.) In the interest of economy they often combine plants of complete cultural incompatibility—dry-growing succulents with moisture-loving aroids; African violets that need sun for flowering with ferns that scorch in it. Too often these dish gardens are crammed with too many plants for the amount of soil; and the roots have been bruised and broken in handling. The florist knows that two-thirds of the customers who buy his product are going to abuse it anyhow. So he takes a “what-the-dickens” attitude. Make it pretty for the moment, for tomorrow it is going to die anyhow. One more word in praise of my many florist friends—just let the man with the green paper, the ribbons, and the carnations sense that you love plants, understand them, and care for them, and he will go to bat for you. He will help you in every possible way. I’ve never known it to fail. Actually, they are a soft-hearted profession.

All right, so you have a typical florist-shop dish garden. Uncle Charlie bought it for you as an anniversary present because it looked cute in the shop window, and he couldn’t think of anything else. For all he knows that green stuff is spinach. As soon as Uncle Charlie has gone home, start remodeling the garden. Check over the plants and remove any that don’t agree with the majority of the other plants on light, moisture, and soil consistency. Pot up the good ones that you want to keep and thin out the others. Remember, those plants are going to do a lot of growing and must not be crowded. Use your ingenuity and common sense. Dig in the soil with that silver-spoon handle and see how much moisture is needed. Set the garden where light and humidity are right for the plants. You will have made yourself a new garden. Care for it as though it were your original creation. And when your next anniversary comes around, and Uncle Charlie comes around with another present—most likely a Chinese silent-butler—he will look at the dish garden and praise you for having a green thumb.

(In the plant list in Chapter 6 you will find plants that are suitable for decorative containers, dish gardens, and model landscapes. In Chapter 16, which is devoted to miniature annuals, you will find additional possibilities.)