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Garden Experiments

Garden Art Sculpture

9 years ago

Hello! It's my first time here and I have no experience with gardens/plants so I need some horticultural advice.

(Sorry in advance for lack of appropriate terminology)

I'm planning create a suspended sculpture the is covered in plants/flowers (small bushy types that flower close to the soil).
The idea is to have the structure (imagine a sphere) packed with soil on the inside with the plants growing through to the outside.

My initial thought was to created it from chicken wire, cut the structure in half, fill each half with soil and close each half with a weed mat to contain the soil; after that I'd mend the halves back together - the chicken wire would allow the plants to grow, water to get in and come out through the bottom and allow for air. Except one layer of easily bendable chicken wire would be too weak to hold the soil as I plan to make it quite large.

My question was whether anyone knows of a hard, supportive but bendable material I could do this with?

Any tips would be great, thanks!

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Comments (2)

Carol love_the_yard (Zone 9A Jacksonville, FL)
8 years ago
Seahorse topiary:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1888636/sphagnum-moss?n=11

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1908451/seahorse-topiary?n=4

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1920157/under-the-sea-fantasy?n=11

Carol in Jacksonville
emerogork
8 years ago
I was given one of these red plastic canvas cylinders with holes on the sides for 8 plants, typically strawberries. The first lesson I learned was the soil and sufficient water for the plants was incredibly heavy and that was only about 2cu ft in size. (64 lbs!)

I then found that I could not hang it from any rafter sturdy enough to hold it because the planter would be in a lot of shade from the house itself. I ended up hooking three "Shepard's hook" plant holders and suspending it in the center.

Then, it required watering two to three times a day and it washed out soil every time and almost washed out the plants.

Strawberries only produced for about 2 weeks ):

I wonder what kind of luck you had in getting something to work...
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