My Miniature Garden

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 255, 24 July 1937, Page 9 (Supplement)

My Miniature Garden

jVTTNIATURE gardening is very inforesting as it is quite easy to make Oriental gardens or old English gardens, or any kind you please. My garden is in a small box about Ift. long, 18in. wide, and 4in. deep. When I was making it, I put some cinders on the bottom, as they help to keep it drained; then I filled it to the brim with soil. Next, I went down to the creek for some small stones, tiny ferns, some green, thick moss, some moss creepers, two tiny manuka bushes, and a little korimako tree. With the stones I made a rockery in one corner and planted the ferns, creepers, and manuka bushes on it, filling up the cracks with moss. Then I took a round tobacco tin and sank it in the soil. After that I mixed a little cement and made a concrete path right along the centre of the box, and also set concrete round the tin, which was to serve as a pond. Then I gathered some brick chips and set them in the cement to give the appearance of crazy-paving. Now I dug up two tiny violet plants, some helen-a-hoops and grape hyacinths, and some “mothers-of-thousands” and planted them round the edge of the box. When I was nearly finished, I spread the moss over the soil and round the roots of the plants, so that it looked like grass, put some sand in the pond and filled it with water, and then my garden was complete.

—Original by Santa Maria (12), Waipukurau.