Greenhouse At Night

I love to sit in my little greenhouse in the evening - it's the blue hour. The sky is a deep, rich blue but the lamp brightens up the inside and its so peaceful. 

I recently moved this very old green shelf into the back of the greenhouse. We salvaged it over 30 years ago from a local 100+ year old form house that was going to be demolished. I love the scallops. It reminds me of the British Auricula Plant Theatres. Someone wondered if I might paint it to match the potting benches but I like the mix of multiple shades of green out there - just like nature. 

This little greenhouse was an inexpensive Amazon purchase a few years ago and it has been worth every penny and more. I had the old bricks, we used scrap lumber to build the benches, one at a time until the configuration held maximum plants for overwintering and then everything but the plants is thrifted. I could spend hours out there. It's a little "escape' just a few feet from my backdoor!

 

June's Morning Light

 

The early morning light in the early summer has a beautiful, soft quality that you just don't get later in the season.

On the screened porch.

The Evolution of the Garden Guy

Many years ago (about 30 years ago because Mollie was a preschooler) we went to an amazing garden show in the old Sears Building in Atlanta. It was filled with the most beautiful gardens created in the warehouse like space. One of the gardens that had been created was home to a garden guy made from terra cotta pots. He was so much fun and Mollie loved him. I was inspired to try and recreate one for our backyard garden. I did and he was around for quite a few years. Funny enough no one can remember what happened to him or why he was dismantled!

This spring when I was cleaning out for the new potager I uncovered a lot of terra cotta pots and I thought it might be time for Garden Guy 2.0. I had used a bunch of the pots to make a Christmas Tree outside the greenhouseChristmas Tree outside the greenhouse in December so I had a pretty good collection of pots to choose form. I had some wire and a pool noodle to use for spacers. I just needed to grab some wire cutters and a serrated knife. 

This is actually the old metal chair (all those pots get heavy) that the original pot guy sat in. I made a hole in the center and put a piece of rebar thru the pot holes and the hole in the chair to stabilize the whole thing and keep it from toppling over and breaking the pots. I also did this because I did not want to permanently glue the pots together. Everything is either wired or slipped over the rebar pole. It will come apart easily if I decide to dismantle him at some point.

I think the pots that form the body are 12 or 14 inch terra cotta pots. 

The rebar stabilizer is not noticeable once the guy is all put together and planted. 

The pot for the head is slightly smaller than the 2 for the body. I was using pots I had on hand. I slid them on the rebar to be sure the proportions worked and then removed them while I wired the legs on. 

I doubled the wire just to be sure and wrapped it around the pole under the bottom "body" pot. Using a serrated knife I cut spacers from the pool noodle. 

Then I simply threaded a pot followed by a spacer on to the wire to create legs. The pool noodle spacers hold the pot in place. You could skip the pacers but you would need quite a few more pots for each leg or arm.

You just keep adding pots until the legs are the length and configuration you want. 

I turned some pots the opposite way to make "knees" that I could plant  in.

After the legs were completed I added the top body pot and began wiring the arms in place. Having the rebar is helpful in securing the arms. The clay pots are a bit heavy when strung together. 

After both arms were secured I slid the pot that makes his head onto the rebar. You can see that I turned one of the arm pots so that I could plant in it if I wanted to. 

I hammered the rebar into the ground a little more once everything was all wired together. 

And then it was time to give this garden guy some hair. I had this asparagus fern already. I ended up dividing it in half with my serrated knife and planting it to each side of the pot so it would definitely hang down like hair!

He fits right in by the greenhouse and the old shed. 

Let me know if you create a garden guy to keep you company in the garden.

P.S. I have used smaller pots to make a small scale, tabletop version of these for a garden party tablescape and they are just as much fun!