Tag Archives: group project

Our Fall Mandala – It’s A New Season!

Fall MandalaThe first day of fall had come and gone, and, while we’d talked about doing a group project mandala design for each season, the days kept slipping away as days do. Our summer mandala had turned out to be so much fun for us, though, that we’d been looking forward to creating another one. Well, last Friday turned out to be The Day.

Dahlia, tithonia and penisetum blooms...croton leaves

Dahlia, tithonia and penisetum blooms…croton leaves

First of all, some of you may not be clear what a mandala is. By definition, a mandala is “any of various ritualistic geometric designs symbolic of the universe, used in Hinduism and Buddhism as an aid to meditation.” Another definition describes a mandala as “circular designs symbolizing the notion that life is never ending.” 

Fall Mandala While ours may not conform completely to a strict definition, this is our version of a mandala, using fruits, vegetables, seeds, leaves, and blooms of each season.

I can see how studying a mandala can be a meditative act. Almost everyone who gazed at it for any length of time mentioned continuing to see more things, and from different angles they had new observations of color, form, and texture as well.

Tacca thought it was a good spot for a nap...

Tacca thought it was a good spot for a nap…

This idea of a meditative design is an interesting one. A customer even wanted to take a picture of it for a friend about to have a baby so she could concentrate on it while she was in labor!

A snake gourd encircles smaller gourds and bittersweet with heuchera leaves, corn kernels and bulbs above...

A snake gourd encircles smaller gourds and bittersweet

With the start of our first mandala this past summer,  Jamie, Molly, and I had begun by gathering our “ingredients”.

Many people have asked whether we made some sort of design on paper before we began. While others probably can be that organized and clinical about it, none of us are, and I’m actually very happy to say there really wasn’t any planning involved in either the summer version or this one.

Tacca's playground!

Tacca’s playground!

Liam got in trouble going after the guinea hen feathers...

Liam got in trouble going after the guinea hen feathers…

So we began by gathering the things that spoke to us of fall, randomly laying them on our sections bit by bit and snitching blooms and leaves from various plants  between helping customers.

At the end of this post,  I’ll list everything we used since it may be hard to tell from the pictures. Wish you could all have seen it in person!

Pumpkins and gourds...

Pumpkins and gourds…

Fall MandalaAs we had done for the first one, we emptied the stage floor completely and laid out a backing of brown Kraft paper that all of our botanicals would be laid on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, it turned out our garden shop cats, Tacca and Liam, wanted very badly to get in on the fun again.  It seemed like a repeat of July!

In fact, the very first pieces I had chosen,  the long, dark leaves of a Pennisetum named ‘Princess’, were quite obviously cat toys in Tacca’s eyes. They both loved the fluffy, light, guinea hen feathers too. We were worried we weren’t going to get very far with this project.

Fall MandalaBut it turns out we have the perfect shop cats. Really, we do. They got bored pretty quickly with our shooing them away constantly, gave up on trying to get those wispy feathers, and strolled off to find some other adventure (or a nap) elsewhere.

Some of the first things we pulled for our fall mandala were, of course, pumpkins and gourds. The snake gourds are so interesting;  it was impossible not to use them as a dark green counterpoint to all the brighter colors of flowers and leaves.

Fall Mandala

The ‘Better Late Than Never Garden‘ added its life to our design too, as we snipped  blooms from massive tithonia plants and the last of the season’s cutting zinnias. The towering hyacinth bean vine in full bloom at the very top of the arbor is so tall it was hard to get many blooms from it,  but the beautiful shade of purple from the few we had turned out to be very pretty in contrast to the orange colored blossoms we’d already gathered.

Orange tithonia petals brighten the lacinato kale, coleus leaves, miniature white pumpkins and guinea hen feathers....

Tithonia, blue kale leaves, feathers…

Other deep hued elements like the purple eggplant with its pretty shape, the dark blooms of African blue basil, and various salvias worked well too.

A particularly pretty grouping, I thought, were blue-green lacinato kale leaves interspersed with guinea hen feathers and single petals of bright orange tithonia.  In fact, many blooms were pulled apart to use, including marigolds with their orange-red streaked yellow petals.Fall Mandala

 

 

I stand back and look, studying what we’ve made.  Hmmm….I really like the green apples against the purple eggplant but the tiny white miniature pumpkins are pretty wonderful too.

Another view...

Another view…

 

Oh, but look at the  beautiful leaves of red leaf lettuce, silvery veined heuchera, the chard’s brilliant red stems,  and that gorgeous green rex begonia. Really, it’s impossible to pick a favorite spot, so I’m going to  stop trying and just meditate on it for now…because that’s what a mandala is for.Fall MandalaFall Mandala

 

 

 

 

 

I know describing the elements doesn’t quite convey the creation of it,  which was pretty much an instinctive  process.  I can say with authority that  it is a really wonderful way to spend time, and we left it in place for a few days (Amazingly, the cats continued to ignore it!).

Lycoris bulbs, coleus leaves...

Lycoris bulbs, coleus leaves…

 

Finally, it was time to dismantle it, as the tithonia  blooms were beginning to fade, the coleus and other leaves were curling, and we needed the space for shop business again. We’re already looking forward to the next one – our winter version, in January, 2016. Stay tuned!

 

FALL MANDALA INGREDIENTS:

Tiny blooms...

Tiny blooms…


Indian corn (whole and kernels), snake gourds, mini pumpkins, gourds, green apples, purple eggplant, lycoris squamigera bulbs, guinea hen feathers, miscanthus blooms Lacinato kale, Charlotte chard, red lettuce, coleus, croton, ‘Red Giant’ mustard, ‘Silver Dollar’ maidenhair fern, ‘River Nile’ begonia, ‘Princess’ fountain grass leaves
Tithonia, zinnia, Mexican sage, ‘Deb’s Blue’ salvia, dahlia, hyacinth bean vine, viola, marigold, dianthus, forced azalea, African blue basil, agastache (Sunset series), purple gomphrena blooms
Sunflower seed heads (gone to seed), bittersweet berries
Everything either from plants, food, pumpkins, in stock or picked from the shop’s garden…

By Kris Blevons

Group Project – Our “Fireworks” Mandala

Tacca and Liam helping....

Tacca and Liam helping….

Fortunately, none of us took the admonishments  by our parents when we were young  to not play with our food too seriously. The other day we really turned our inner child loose and played with lots of veggies, fruit, flowers, and leaves to create our version of a mandala for the 4th of July holiday.

taking shape...

taking shape…

Truthfully, we hadn’t yet decided what we were going to post on Oak Street Garden Shop’s Facebook page for the 4th and when we thought of doing a big design using all our varieties of food, we knew this would be the perfect thing – our version of botanical fireworks!

Not finished yet...

Not finished yet…

Thankfully the end of June is pretty hot and there isn’t a whole lot going on as far as planting, projects, or customers. This might normally be a bad thing for business, but, on this particular day, it was actually pretty good. To top it off, we’d  come in that morning to a shop with no power since there’d been some pretty hefty storms the night before.

Close-up...

Close-up…

After we came up with the big botanical art idea, Molly grabbed lots of brown Kraft paper and laid it on the floor of one of the display stages, moving furniture out of the way to create a big space to work in.  Jamie grabbed a ladder and set it up on one side so we’d be able to take pictures of it from above when we were finished.

 

 

I began gathering various leaves that I thought would be fun to incorporate with the peaches, tomatoes, eggplant, squash, butterbeans, blueberries, corn, and more that we began to amass. Slowly we started playing, laying out various veggies and fruits in designs that caught our fancy.

 

Angie brought in some big Kong coleus leaves, and I went across the street to cut some dried dill flower heads to add to our mix of food, foliage and flowers.

Close-up...

Close-up…

 

 

From the beginning our shop cats, Tacca and Liam, had to get in on the action. In fact, the very first leaf I placed, a yucca, was immediately a cat toy for Tacca. “Uh-oh”, I thought.  “I wonder if this project is going to get off the ground?!”Vegetable Mandala - Fireworks

 

 

 

Vegetable Mandala - Fireworks

 

Liam came and went, but he was surprisingly calm, simply walking through on his way to lie down under the coffee table we’d moved out of the way.

 

 

For a while at the very start, he and Tacca lounged in open spaces not yet covered with botanicals. Finally, though, they became bored and went off in pursuit of other things…or maybe to take a nap.

Slowly but surely our project became a colorful tapestry of shapes, textures, and design, with items carefully placed just so and moved if we weren’t happy with how it looked from atop the ladder. While this project was taking shape, Pinkie was busy planting two of the cast stone head planters – but that’s for another post….

I love how our project turned out. Playing with food has never been so much fun!

An Old Table Turned Into a Miniature Wonderland…

Molly...the beginning.

Molly…the beginning.

If you’ve kept up with some of the posts of projects we’ve done at Oak Street Garden Shop, you might realize we enjoy creating fun things as well as helping customers with plants and gardening. Our latest project started life as an old table…one that perhaps had seen better days.

Rigging the waterfall...

Rigging the waterfall…

We’d all discussed creating a larger miniature garden display using hills and had seen many miniature garden displays on various sites online through Pinterest and other places.  I showed everyone a really large display that even had a waterfall and “boulder” filled stream. Well, we wanted a waterfall too!

The cottage Jamie embellished...

The cottage Jamie embellished…

So, the idea of a waterfall and hills became the starting point. Our display would need a miniature garden house, and Jamie embellished a rather plain one with the addition of “stones” on the front and moss, lichen and succulents on its roof. Now it looked like the charming cottage we envisioned.Lauren, Adding Plants...

The Hillside...

 

 

 

 

In just a few days our sad little table became the home to a sea shell laden beach, grottos, the aforementioned waterfall, and various places to walk and sit. Little by little it grew in proportions with the addition of tiny houseplants on the right hand side of the display and succulents on the other.

Lauren's treehouse...

Lauren’s treehouse…

Lauren worked for days on the “treehouse”, starting with a piece of tree root and adding a miniature garden cottage. She slowly added more and more to this hideaway in a tree, including a pulley to haul up a case of  wine, a hammock, and a rope swing over the waterfall below. Billy helped secure it so it wouldn’t topple.  I may do a whole post on this alone!

Tiny sunbathers...

Tiny sunbathers…

 

 

 

Pinkie contributed her arts background and brought in some Sculp It!  modeling clay that Molly, Lauren and Bert used to fashion tiny figures.  Sunbathers on the beach, an entire yoga class under the tree house,  (On their yoga mats!)  a figure that looks suspiciously like owner, Billy Angell, tending the garden in front of the cottage, and more. Two rather large people – not quite in scale with the rest, but much too fun not to include, are seated at the bistro table front and center.image

Adding more plants...

Adding more plants…

Jamie and I continued to plant and add more items – a frog on a bench, a turtle on a “boulder” a birdhouse, benches, and so much more. All the while more ideas got bounced around – a customer even suggested adding a gnome – what a fun idea! People invariably made the comment that they kept “finding” more as they gazed at this miniature wonderland in progress.image

Of course we had the world of the greenhouse at our fingertips to create this – including tiny houseplant ferns, air plants, aluminum plants, Scotch and Irish moss, selaginella and even tiny pitcher plants. Plants that required the same moisture were grouped together. This meant the succulents and plants that like to be drier naturally ended up separate. Hen and chicks, haworthias and sedums were tucked in the sphagnum moss and chicken wire “hillside”.

 

Tiny tree slice stepping stones make a path to the “beach”.  Walk a little further around and it gets rockier and less “beachy”, but there’s a fire pit for a night time party…and cliff caves to explore too. Rough rock steps lead the way back up to the cottage from here.

A work in progress...

A work in progress…

 

 

The spring planting season is about to begin and people will be wandering the nursery to find plants for their outdoor spaces and planters. I hope they’ll make their way into the greenhouse with their friends and families to see our own “garden in miniature” and that it will bring a smile…

Tending the garden...

Tending the garden…

 

 

 

As you might be able to tell from these pictures, our project is not quite complete…but what garden ever is?