By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer
Photos by Andrea Gomez, Sunset staff photographer
We show the below tabletop decor idea from Pasadena landscape architect Heather Lenkin in our March issue as part of our Garden Anywhere story. Or you can read about it here.
We didn't have space in the issue to include another "garden anywhere" idea of Lenkin's we all liked. So I'm going to publish it here.
Lenkin's inspiration for the above scene was the desire to have something attractive to look at from her dining room windows. (The tiles cover the roof to an underground wine cellar.)
To create the tapestry, she covered the tiles with chicken wire and filled them with a goopy mixture of potting soil, florist moss, polymer, yogurt, and water. Then she planted the muck with small succulents--Aeonium, Echeveria, Crassula, and Sedum.
Lenkin's detailed "recipe" follows:
Heather Lenkin's Garden Muck
Ingredients:
3 gallons potting soil
4 large chunks of florist moss
16-ounces plain yogurt (to encourage moss on tiles)
2 tablespoons of a polymer (soil moistener)
Water
Equipment
5-gallon plastic pail
Blender
Process
Mix chunks of moss in a blender with one cup of water and the plain yogurt. Set aside.
Fill the plastic pail to 1/4-full with water. Add polymer and mix. Let stand for 15 minutes or so. Stir again. If the mixture looks like chunky jello, move to the next step. If not, add more polymer until it is of that consistency.
Add yogurt, moss, and water to the pail. Fill remainder of the pail with potting soil. Mix and let sit for 15 minutes. Mix once more. You should end up with slight chunky muck.
Assembly
Cover the desired area with 1" chicken wire (galvanized hexagonal wire netting with holes about the size of a quarter). Tip: If covering a large area, you may want to cut the wire into several strips. If you need to repair or replant a section later, this saves you from having to dissassemble the entire tapestry.
Slather garden muck over the chicken wire, filling all the holes.
Tuck plants into growing medium, taking care to get roots under the edges of the chicken wire.
Cover any exposed chicken wire with floral moss.
Planting tips
Line up your plants on the ground in the pattern you expect to plant so you can see the whole design at once.
Plant in multiples and waves as you would in a garden bed. Keep it simple.
Contrary to what you would do in a flower bed, plant the smaller plants at the top of the slant surface and the larger ones near the bottom.
Watering
Water with drip irrigation or gently spray by hand as needed.
