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How to Make Tabletop Garden – Black N Matching

Sandy — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:08:39 +0000

Tabletop garden – Black N Matching is not only an easy-to-make tabletop garden, but it is also a garden that is easy to maintain, making it a great gift for any of your self-claimed blackthumb friends.

Here, let me show you how to make this tabletop garden.

In this tabletop garden, I used mini Fittonia, dwarf Neanthe Bella Palm, and Chinese Evergreen. All of these plants can grow well in partial shade, as well as indoor.

Because this is my Mother’s Day present for my mom, I handmade a heart-shaped S and put it in the garden. It is not only my initial, but also my mom’s (Susana), as well as my brother’s (Stephen). If you don’t have a particular design that you want to put in your garden like I did, you can consider using cookie cutters, which make good decorations in your tabletop gardens.

Here are some tabletop gardens that I have used cookie cutters:
Tabletop Garden – After Jurassic
Tabletop Garden – My Star
Tabletop Garden – Double the Love

Chopstick is a common gardening tool for Chinese. I like using a chopstick when I am potting my plants. And in Japanese Garden, Gururaj shares how he uses his pair of chopsticks in his garden. I bet many Japanese gardeners use chopsticks when they are in their gardens as well.

Besides chopstick, my pointed-tip tweezers is another gardening tool that I have found very helpful. In fact, since the objects in my tabletop gardens are very small, for greater precision, I prefer my tweezers over a pair of chopsticks when I am working on my tabletop gardens.

I made this tabletop garden on May 9, a day before Mother’s Day. It looked fine, with only a small part of the “S” being covered by the mini Fittonia. However, on Mother’s Day, which was just a day later, I found the plants had covered almost the whole “S”. This was due to the nature that plants – the tendency of reaching towards the light source.

I got reminded again that, unlike oil painting or sculpture, the matters involving in a tabletop garden is organic and will change along with time and its surrounding environment. And yes, that’s the fun part too!

Tabletop Garden – Kitty Snacks

Sandy — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:52:55 +0000

After experimenting with growing wheatgrass for about two weeks, I had a pretty good idea of how to grow the grass well in a container, and was more or less ready to make a cat grass tabletop garden as a birthday present for my cat loving friend. And because I wanted the cat grass in the container to be ready for the cats to snack on by the time I gave this garden to my friend, I needed to make this tabletop garden a week in advance.

These photos are taken on the 5th day after I planted the seeds. And since my friend, Janet, is planning to buy a house in the next few months, I added a tiny house in the garden as a little decor. When I gave this catgrass tabletop garden to my friend on the 8th day, the grass was around 6-7 inches tall, just about right for harvesting

Tabletop Garden – Double the Love v2

Sandy — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:34:55 +0000

This is the second Tabletop Garden – Double the Love that I have made, and it is now in Randon Art Workshop. While people can buy this tabletop garden in the workshop, to me, it is more for promotional purpose than for sales. Hopefully, the city dwellers, especially the younger generation, can find more fun with the green! Gardening doesn’t have to be anything too serious. Making a tabletop garden is fun, and it’s nothing too complicated. While a tabletop garden introduces more green into our homes and workplaces, it also makes a special and unique gift for our family and friends

Tabletop Garden – Black N Matching

Sandy — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:47:24 +0000

This tabletop container garden is my gift to my mom for Mother’s Day this year. When I was designing this garden, I wanted it to be an easy-to-maintain garden that requires little time and attention from my busy mom. I wanted the garden to be something cool and fun, while the plants in the garden must be hardy enough to survive on little attention. I don’t want to get my mom discouraged because she thinks she kills the plants in the garden after a few weeks.

So, this is what I have made for my mom – a tabletop container garden with different low-maintenance indoor plants that have attractive foliage and colors.

I can’t say black is a very popular color for Mother’s Day, and as well, it surely is not my mom’s favorite color (I rarely see my mom wearing anything in black). However, this didn’t cross my mind but only until this morning when I was looking at the photos of the container garden and about to write a post on it. It actually bothered me quite a bit that I called my mom and offered a remake of the garden for her with another container. But surprisingly, she told me she loves it. She said that she especially likes the color of the container for it matches perfectly with her black furniture.

What a relief! I am so happy that I called!

How to Make Container Garden – Money Bowl

Sandy — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:57:03 +0000

We know that good drainage is the key to healthy plants, but the containers that we find most attractive are often the ones without drainage holes. So, to broaden my choices of containers, I decided to go ahead and try to drill drainage holes in the containers by myself.

Because this was my first time drilling drainage holes, I chose a wooden Japanese bowl as my container for I knew that it would be much easier to drill holes on wood than on glass. And as expected, this was so easy.

Drill the Holes

In order to hang my container garden, besides the drainage holes, I have also made three evenly spaced holes around the rim of the container. Make sure the holes are large enough to accommodate the size of the rope that will be used to hang the garden.

Pilea peperomioides is one of those plants that grow well in water (check out this post – Suitable Plants for Crystal Soil and Hydroculture for a list of other plants that grow well in water). So, if you are growing the plants in water, you don’t need to make any drainage hole.

Pot the Pilea Peperomioides

I put a piece of landscape fabric at the bottom of the bowl to keep the soil from washing through the drainage holes. Then I repotted the pilea peperomioides into its new container. For better adaptation, I always keep some of the soil that is around the roots of the plant when I repot my plants.

Hang with Ropes & S Hooks

I simply tied a rope at each of the three holes and tied all three ropes together at the top. Then, with the S-hook that I made by using plier and some wire I found at home, I hanged my container garden – Money Bowl on the window guard of my room. And if you don’t want to make your own S-hook, you can find them available in different sizes in most hardware stores.

Container Garden – Money Bowl

Sandy — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:11:48 +0000

This plant that has some very round green leafs mounted in the center on a long stem is called Pilea Peperomioides. It is a plant native to the Yunnan province in the South of China. And due to its origin and the resemblance between its leafs and coins, this plant is also known as the Chinese money plant.

Since I have already drilled some holes on the bottom of this wooden Japanese bowl, I had no choice but planted my Chinese money plant in soil. But like pathos and lucky bamboo, Chinese money plant is a hydroculture plant that is very suitable to be planted in water without soil or any other growing medium.

You can check this post for a list of plants that are suitable to grow in the water.

As mentioned earlier, roots that are grown in water (called water roots) are more brittle than soil-grown roots. Hence, growing houseplants in water isn’t exactly for those serious gardeners who take their plants to exhibitions or competitions.

But for the rest of us who haven’t yet tried hydroculture, I would recommend you to give this fun and easy way of growing plants a try. And it can be very educational too! With a transparent container, kids can observe the development of the roots as the plant grows.

Check out this post if you want to learn how to make container garden – Money Bowl.

And you can go to this post to learn how to pot plants in hydroculture.

Tabletop Garden – A Green Cappuccino

Sandy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:06:26 +0000

This is my latest tabletop garden – A Green Cappuccino. Ever wonder what those greens are? They are not moss or some type of groundcover plants, but believe it or not, they are dragon fruit seedlings – one of those exotic, bizarre-looking fruit which you can find in Southeast Asia.

For better drainage, I used a plastic container with drainage holes. And in order to get the plastic container to fit into my coffee cup, I cut up the container and made some alterations.

Besides creativity, this part also requires some skills and lots of patience

Tabletop Garden – Cactus Garden v2

Sandy — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:24:48 +0000

As I said earlier, I originally planned to cover my tabletop garden – Cactus Garden with a layer of off-white gravels. But since I couldn’t find any on hand, I used some big black stones instead. While the tabletop garden looked pretty cool with the black stones, the picture of the garden covered with small gravels had always been in my mind.

So, finally, to stop my restless itch for remaking the garden, I went to the flower market and bought some perlites yesterday. And here is my Cactus Garden Version 2! I am very happy with it, especially the little caution camel crossing sign that I made.

Tabletop Garden – Cactus Jungle

Sandy — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:29:13 +0000

Here is another tabletop cactus garden. Since this tabletop garden is bigger and has many more cacti than my other cactus tabletop garden – Cactus Garden, I simply called it the Cactus Jungle.

Because I wanted this tabletop garden to be viewed from all sides, I put the tallest cacti in the middle. Then, I packed as many cacti as I had, so to make it feel like a jam-packed garden.

I put my tabletop garden – Cactus Jungle outside my North-facing balcony. Hopefully, my cacti find enough sunlight there. In addition, I rotate my garden on a regular basis to make sure that all the cacti have enough sunlight on all sides.

Tabletop Garden – Cactus Garden

Sandy — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:39:45 +0000

Cactus makes very good tabletop gardens. There are many species of cacti, some with outrageous colors, some with small yet flashy flowers, and some with weird shapes and sizes. We can use cactus to make a very big tabletop garden crammed with various types of cacti, or we can use some baby cacti to make a petit tabletop garden as small as a coffee cup.

Ideas of cactus garden are limitless. Just be creative and give it a try. I guarantee that you will find a lot of fun in making tabletop gardens with cactus too!

I went shopping in the morning and got myself 8 pots of cacti. There were so many different species of cacti in the market. Many of them were very beautiful, with pretty flowers, flashy colors, funny shapes and sizes. If I didn’t make any effort in stopping myself from buying more, I probably would end up with many more cacti than what I have now.

Before actually starting to plant any cactus into my garden, I tried to get a better idea of the garden layout first. Since my container garden would be viewed from the front, taller plants should go in the back.

Phallic cactus – The phallic shape of this cactus didn’t hit me until I brought the cactus home and got the plant out from its pot… haha

Originally, I wanted to cover my cactus tabletop garden with a layer of small, off-white stones. But since I couldn’t find any on hand, I used some bigger stones instead. The tabletop garden actually looks pretty cool with these big stones.