An inspiration

     A couple of weeks ago I was walking through a museum in Leon, Nicaragua.  It was in a very old colonial house, and it had, as usual for such houses, a garden in the interior.  It had a lot of tropical plants.  Suddenly, it hit me--I have to build a tropical garden of my own.  And I have which I hope will be the perfect spot--in my present sunken garden.  The first photo shows one of many such gardens I saw in Nicaragua.  The other photos show my present sunken garden.

Round Three

     Here is the last of three moss gardens I am building for a private client in Wisconsin.  I will not be done with this one until next spring, as there is now snow on the ground.
     This garden is centered on a six-foot tall obelisk from the 1800s somewhere in Europe.  I hope to have some sort of reflecting pool surrounding the obelisk, using black dye in the water for increased reflecting capability.  But other plans might materialize by the spring.
    

     There was originally a wide path off the lawn into a large woods.  Heavy iron chairs and benches were placed around the obelisk, which is about 80 feet up the path.  The plants in the path were mainly sedges and weeds, with some moss among these.  Originally, I planned to kill the sedges and weeds, hoping to not harm the moss, letting it fill in.  Thinking that would take too long, I decided to add an inch of ground and add many pieces of the moss Climacium americanum into the ground.  This moss fills in fairly quickly, and it makes a good lawn-like surface to walk on occasionally.

     Next spring the path will be extended about 200 feet farther into the woods, up a hill and having  two long curves in it.
     The sides of the path are lined with cobblestones made of sandstone, which was quarried in western Wisconsin in the 1880s.  These stones were originally used for a loading dock alongside a railroad landing at a factory site in Milwaukee.

Round Two

(Note: I will be in Nicaragua and Honduras until December 17th, so there will be no post until then.

     These photos are of the second moss I garden I built this summer for a client.  There is a short path entering a large woods that leads to a nineteenth century wire pergola that came from England.  Inside of it is part of the first English parliament building, constructed in the 10th Century.
     I brought in several rocks, many with moss already growing on them.  To the rest I added moss, attaching it with 100% silicone caulk.  One very large rock, a weathered limestone, required three people to move into place.
     Along the path is a large animal feeding trough, also several hundred years old.  I first filled it with ground, then added moss on top of it.
     Most of the moss on the ground is Thuidium delacatulum.