Cultivating Hill Cottage

So we have been really trying to grow our garden ! We are having so much fun with the kids teaching them about plants and helping things to grow. We always check them each day and water them. Eli loves to use the watering can all by himself.

For FHE we got a ton of starts from my parents and planted them. We talked about plants growing just like us. We all need lots of good things to help us grow.

Also I made some topiary type plants that do not require watering or much of anything beyond the initial time investment.

Supplies:

Grapevine ball

Floral foam

Terra cotta pots

Sticks

Greenery

Rocks or moss

Hot glue and hot glue gun.

So I fell in love with these  Button leaf topiary's from Ballard Designs, that ,of course, I could never afford.. They were my inspiration.

Step 1-find some of those grape vine balls on clearance at Walmart and buy them.(mine were $2 but I think they are normally like $3.50)

Step 2- find a stick* you really like in your yard and cut it to size (whatever size you want!).

Step 3- spend at least 30 min looking for your hot glue gun. Then do a huffy breath when you realize how long it took to find. ( umm, this step is totally optional)

Step 4- find in your craft stash (or buy) green vine looking silk or plastic greenery. I looked everywhere for button leaf greenery and the only places I could find it was Michael s and Hobby Lobby- Wal Mart and Dollar tree failed to have it, surprise surprise right?

Step 5- Run the greenery through gaps in the grapevine topiary using hot glue to secure everything nicely in place. (I also shoved some greenery inside the grapevine ball to make it look fuller.

Step 6- Hot glue your awesome stick from the back yard to the grapevine ball. I found a part of the grapevine ball that had a lot of grapevines running across it and shoved the stick in there tightly and then hot glued like crazy. I also stick some of the heavy stem part of the greenery crisscrossed inside of the ball this helped the topiary stay centered on the stick.

Step 7- Take a terra cotta pot and place floral foam in the bottom. Now place the topiary you just made stick first into the foam. Cover the base of foam with rocks or moss.

·       * Note sticks are anywhere in the circumference of any sized coin, twigs are tiny things that cannot be strong, At least according to my definition, please choose a stick that is thick enough to be the “trunk” part of the topiary.