| Flowering faces Creative
containers make good gardening gifts
If the
gardeners on your list have every tool and plant imaginable, you can create a green gift
they won't find in any mass merchandise store.
Make them a ``flower-pot face'' - one on the serious and studious side or a silly one
sure to send them into chuckles each time they look at it.
It is not difficult to give an ordinary plain container a ``face,'' says Gill Dickinson
in her newest book, ``Green Gifts: How to Turn Flowers and Plants into Original and
Lasting Gifts.'' Then put a plant in the pot for ``hair'' that really grows.
Children especially will like to paint and glue funny faces, says Gill.
Here are some of her tips on how to create a growing funny face:
* Use small stones, pebbles or pieces of broken china or tile to create eyes, noses,
eyebrows and mouths.
* For a pot with handles, create earrings by winding wire around stones and hanging
them from the handles. Shells can be glued on for ears.
* Best plants for ``hair'' - round, wooly or trailing cacti, rosette types of
succulents, small-leaved ferns and ivy, grasses, creeping fig, Swedish ivy, creeping moss,
peperomia, spider plant.
* Consider creating pot faces with herbs for cooking, such as parsley where the
``hair'' can be snipped and used in cooking. Plant chives or mint so the recipient can
watch the ``hair'' grow.
GREEN GIFT
* Learn how to create more than 50 growing gifts year-round with the 128-page ``Green
Gifts: How to Turn Flowers and Plants into Original and Lasting Gifts'' ($27.95) by
Fulcrum Publishing.
Author Gill Dickinson has an honors degree in textiles from the Central School of Art
and Design in London and was formerly head of wardrobe at London's Royal Ballet School.
She now writes and works as a creative stylist. Available through local bookstores or
contact Fulcrum at (800) 992-2908 or www.fulcrum-books.com
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