Garden Sewing

We have an enormous hedge along our front walkway. When I say enormous, I mean at least 30 feet tall. Juniper, I think. It's been there forever. Probably used to be a cute little hedge back in the 1970s, but it's been encroaching on the walkway, so we asked a gardener guy to whack it back for us. 

Long story short, when he was done it looked like this:

Pretty scary, right? It still looks OK on our neighbor's side and we don't even want to imagine how much it would cost to take it out and put up a fence or something in its place. So we came up with a plan to disguise the spooky underside.

We went to HomeDepot and got some 8x4 foot redwood fence panels. I basically just hung them from the branches of the ghost hedge. Who knows how long it will last, but with a few pots of succulents in front, I think it's an improvement.

I decided I wanted to think of something to break up that expanse of lattice though. How about some of those hanging fabric planters, eh?

I had some craft felt and dowels at my disposal, so I fudged a pattern and got to work. It's one long pocket, 20 inches long by 4 inches deep. The little stay tapes are to keep the thing from bagging out. It can hold a few inches of lightweight potting soil and a cornucopia of succulent cuttings. Succulents are amazing plants. They're happy with very little soil. In fact, they don't really need any soil at all, so these planters can be pretty lightweight.

Once I ironed out the measurements, I got into a groove and sewed up a quartet pretty quickly.

Here's my prototype planted with a few things snipped from the garden. I have high hopes that my little succulent incubators will thrive.

If you want to see more about how you can hang succulents in all kinds of vertical spaces, check out my succulent sensei, Laura Eubanks. This is her YouTube video that shows you how to set up succulent gutters. They can be absolutely gorgeous...