The Garden In Winter.....

Stems and Pods.....

Some of you, Dear Readers, Might recall that when I was on the mend from my broken arm last Summer, I made a few stems of Vinca for the eventual Garden of The Folly. I will try not to bore you by saying that I had partly assembled a few more stems of the vinca, and they sat cluttering my work area all Fall and much of this Winter. But when I moved The Folly recently to it's new being worked on location, the unpainted stems were still floating from pile to pile until I decided last week (during my vacation clean-up and re-organization) that the time had come to paint them and glue them together! You can see them above with the first bunch.... I have a long way to go before I have enough vinca plants for the entire garden! And while I have been working on the Spiral stairs and the shelves for Hardwick Hall, (see last week's post) I have been staring at The Folly gardens which are now positioned right at my elbow. And during all those moments of waiting for glue to dry, I have been continuing to plan The Folly Gardens. I know it must seem to some of you that they are the slowest landscaping project ever, but I have been wrestling with a particular feature of the garden (aside from the incomplete Tree House Tree) and that is the Lilac bush which I want to have on one side of the porch in front of the kitchen window. (And some of you might recall I had started the blossoms for the bush at least two years ago....!) My problem was not knowing how to make the stems for the Lilac bush... because I wanted this bush to be huge and old and have gnarly twisted stems. This might not matter too much if the bush was going to be covered in leaves.... which it will, for summertime... but I must remind you, I am sure, that I plan to make this garden seasonally changeable! What? I hear you ask... seasonal gardens for a Dollhouse? Well, you might have noticed that over the years I have occasionally had snow falling on The Folly, and certainly have shown it at Halloween without snow, and in the Summer there will be flowers.... so I have been reluctant to choose only one Season for this garden! And I am quite proud of my changeable garden "pods" I constructed for this very purpose when I built all those brick paths a few years ago!

Where you see the pile of "bricks" in the above picture

 is where the Lilac bush will stand... 

and if you look closely you will see

 a fine line in the "ground" under those bricks.....

Here you can see it closer.....

With the pile of bricks moved....

The section of Garden lifts out.... carefully cut to be removable!

And I made patterns all those months and years ago, 

so I could duplicate the garden shape well enough....

To make replaceable exchangeable garden "pods"..... 

each with a different Season of plants!

And the Vinca which is a hardy evergreen ground cover 

will disguise the remaining sections of the gardens

 that don't change with the seasons!

(The nail inserted in the pink foam is so the pods

 can be easily lifted in and out while

 the gardens are being constructed)

And all those"bricks" in that pile are for making an edging

 to the pods to disguise the seam which would be visible otherwise.

Finally I glued them in place!

On both sides of the porch!

(That blob of pink foam is standing in for

 a possible boulder.... design in progress...!)

And I finally made all the "duplicate pods"...

and carefully labeled them with the season they will "grow"....

And decided for sure that the right side garden

 will not have any bushes like the lilac on the left side garden!

Which needs to have Four identical "bushes" built.... !

Yikes! What was I thinking?

Meanwhile.....

The bricks were made from terra-cotta colored sculpey....

but needed to be painted a color closer to the dark red of the other bricks.....

You can see they also edge the lower section of the garden....

which will have vinca as its primary cover....

With my few small samples standing in 

for the eventual ground cover they will be.

And the little bird bath too....

and there will be plenty of moss... 

and the bricks still need to be "dirtied up" a bit more!

But all of this is just a prelude, Dear Readers,

 to the building of the Lilac bushes!

Because, while shopping at Michaels on my vacation,

 I came across some wonderful paper covered florist wire

 that answered all my lilac stem needs perfectly!

Because I wanted my lilac bushes to resemble

 these old shrubs at the place where I work.... 

although these were badly damaged by an ice storm last year....

Here you can see a closer view of the gnarled old stems I am trying to recreate....

they have a beautiful twisting texture to the bark.... can you see it there?

Well, Dear Readers, I started trying to see

 how well the paper covered wires would work

 if I glued smaller wires to them for the smaller branches.....

I am relying heavily on "the glue trick" here.....

using the bulk of the dried glue to form part of the

 "shape" of the branch where it connects to the stem, 

as well as the glue simply attaching the pieces. 

And especially where the smaller wires 

need to attach at the top of the thicker stem....

Eventually they will all need to be painted to unify the color too.

And once the stems are "planted" in the "pod"......

it gets harder to work on them... 

but I have to be careful to make the two...

 three.... um four versions all the same!

And this is before we get to the stems that are really gnarly...!

But we have to test them for fit in the garden....

mindful of the roof eaves on the porch which overhang half the "pod"!

It is really a tiny space for such a bush.... 

but I want that overgrown ancient feel...

There will be many more stems... 

and the smaller branchings still have not been added to any of them!

But it is the gnarly old ones that really add the character....

and have to be "planted" right away

 in order to get the angle and position correct.....

and then have to be "duplicated".......

Which is not as easy as it sounds!

While the glue is drying the "pods" need to be on their side....

 somehow supporting the joined wires while they dry....

Here is the second "pod".... 

not all these stems are attached yet...

I am still working on the shape for them.... 

and have not started adding the smaller branches... 

which probably should be done before

 all the stems are attached to the "pods".

Here's the "duplicate pod" next to the initial "pod".....

And I have barely begun three and four....

because I ran out of that wonderful paper covered wire

 and must go back for more!

But I am determined, Dear Readers,

to make all the bushes for all the Seasons....

No matter how long it takes.... 

Because I want to be able to show you

 The Folly Garden in Winter

 as well as Spring and Summer...

Because whether or not there is snow on the ground,

 the Winter Garden is all about those gorgeous old Stems!