What Shall I Name It?

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As some of you may have seen I just did myself a little garden to keep me happy all year round, it’s my air plant garden. Why did I do it?

When my father died a few years ago he had a small air plant that I have since found out is a Caput-Madusae. My father never saw the plant in bloom or had any of the family. Christine asked my sister if she could have the plant and look after it as my father had, Janet agreed to this and the plant was now in our hands. After about a year we had the most beautiful flower appear on it and we could not wait to tell the family. I can remember my wife saying if only your dad was alive to see it he would have loved it, maybe he has seen it I hope so. This is the plant my dad left.

As you can see quite a nice plant and very colourful; the plant then slowly died back but as it did a small new plant began to grow, if you look carefully you can see the dead plant on the right of the picture as you look at it. A year later and the baby plant had got as big as mum had been, but he was not as pretty, he never showed his true colours, the red, the mauve and that yellow tip was missing but never mind it still looked good and was something that was a great reminder of my dad, indeed we still call it Dads Plant, that’s its name.

Over time I began to like the plant more and more and decided that I would buy myself some plants and grow them myself just like dad did but I never got round to it and all thoughts of my growing my own faded. It was only revived this year when our baby “he” plant had in fact grown into a gorgeous colourful “she” plant because we all of a sudden found our selves saying she is lovely and not referring to the plant as he. Christine then put the dampers on it by saying we could not afford to buy the plants with all the money we had spent on the garden this year. So I set out to build my garden as cheap as I could and ask for the assistance of my two sons Ricky and Mark.

My job find the plants, materials for the garden and learn what to do, my thanks go to Key Essentials for some great advice and info from their web site.

The boys’ job was to give me money for fathers’ day, they come up trumps and I even had enough over to buy a new Haws watering can.

Source of materials was quite simple I wanted a base so I used an off cut from the patio slabs we have just laid in the garden after all it is natural stone. What will compliment the stone and the plants was the next question I asked myself? The answer I came up with was wood another natural and easily available material that would compliment both the stone and the foliage of the plants. I remembered then that some time back there had been some tree branches lopped on a public walk near to where I work, it was on this walk I found my piece of wood. I now had the base, wood and silicon that I needed, only the plants to get so off to Blooms I go.

When I got to the garden centre I was shocked at the price of the ready made planters with four plants in a shallow terracotta base about 8” in diameter, filled with concrete with sand spread on it and an elephant ornament thrown in for good measure £50. How much are they charging for loose plants? I was wondering if I would have enough money, the nice surprise was £2.99 and £3.95. They had 4 trays of plants so I sat myself on the floor with all 4 trays and laid all the plants out so I could pick what I considered to be the best, yes I got some funny looks but it was my cash and it would be spent wisely. Some 30 minutes later I had eleven lovely looking plants and a bag of white moss. Having put all the remaining plants back in the trays and on the shelf I went and parted with just under £31 for my plants and £29.99 for my watering can.

When I got home I set about making my garden; first I made sure the wood stood on the base was level and stable, this was done by a couple of saw cuts then rubbing down with glass paper. Next was fixing to the base for this I used clear mastic on all four point that connected to the base to hide the mastic I put small amounts of the white moss over the mastic. Having laid out all the plants I then set them out on my work bench to try and see what they would look like on the wood, after one or two changes I came up with the layout that you can see from my picture. Very carefully I attached the plants with silicon mastic to the wood in the order I had them on my work bench, at the same time hiding the mastic with small parts of moss. A couple of hours later it was finished and as I stood back to admire my garden I thought dad would be pleased with that.

This is not quite the end because as you may remember Christine had told me I could not have my air plants so I took it indoors and placed it smack bang in the middle of her kitchen work tops to make sure she would not miss it when she got home from work. As the front door opened I thought ticking off coming soon; as she walked in the kitchen she looked at my garden and said “Brin that looks lovely who did it?” I did was a shocked reply she never had a go at me. It looks lovely; thanks came my reply it’s our winter garden, so it’s no longer my garden but ours.

As you may remember the original plant is called Dads Plant what I want you to do is suggest a name for me for our garden and the name we pick as the best I will have engraved on a brass plate and attached to our garden, thank you for reading my blog.

Brin Meredith

• 27 Jun, 2009
• 9 likes

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