Making a Garden Time Capsule

Don’t you love looking through old photos and stuff you wrote ages ago? It’s really funny to see how much you’ve changed. Have you ever considered making a time capsule for your own garden? Imagine the fun of digging it up in 10 or 20 years time - or if you forget all about it, some day someone else will find it and treat it as real buried treasure! You can do it all by yourself or get the whole family involved.

You will need: A tall glass coffee jar with a screw top lid & lots of imagination.

1. Wash the jar out with hot water and let it drain upside down on a wire rack for several days. Wash the lid too and let it drain as well. They must both be perfectly dry inside.

2. In selecting the things to go into your capsule, pretend that it is going to be opened by someone you don’t know many years from now. (It won’t matter if you open it yourself instead!)

Things you might include:

photos of yourself and your family (put names on the back)
a photo of the house
a photo of the garden
some information about yourself, the rest of the family and the neighbours
information about your pets and maybe a drawing of them
a description of the colour scheme of the house and maybe a floor plan
a list of plants growing in the garden and a plan of the garden
a recent nursery catalogue
the front page of the newspaper

DON'T FORGET TO ADD THE DATE!!

3. To put the material into the jar, put it all together on to the largest sheet of paper and roll it into a cylinder. Slip it into the jar and it will unroll. Put the lid on very, very firmly.

4. Choose a place to bury the bottle. You will need a deep hole in a spot where the jar is unlikely to be broken by a fork or spade. Beside a fence, in a rockery or near the trunk of a big tree are possibilities.

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Party Garlands

Have you got a birthday coming up? This month we’ve got an idea for special party garlands that your guests can make for themselves from the garden. It’s lots of fun and the garlands are SO pretty. They would be really nice for a fairy party - or maybe you can just make one for yourself or one of your toys for fun.

You Will Need: long trails of creepers such as ivy, potato vine, jasmine; flowers with longish stems; twisters or florists’ wire

What to Do:

1. First select some long pieces of ivy or other fairly stiff- stemmed creeper. It needs to be a couple of times bigger than the distance around your head. Curl the stems around to make a circle. Make the circle so that it fits comfortably on your head. Tie the ends together with twisters or wire so that the circlet stays together.

2. Take some other long pieces of creeper and wind them around the circlet. Weave them in and out of the stems so that it holds together well. You might need to secure the ends with a twister or piece of wire. It should look nice and leafy.

3. The flowers that you use will need to have quite long stems. Pelargonium and geranium flowers are really good and stay fresh. You could also use wattle blossoms, grevillea, hebe or lavender flowers. Weave the stems of the flowers in and out of the other stems. You will find that you won’t need to tie them on.

4. When you have finished, pop it on - a flowery crown for a fairy prince or princess!

There are lots of different types of forest fairy folk. Can you think of these?
1. P _ _ _ _
2. E _ _
3. G _ _ _ _
4. G _ _ _ _ _
5. I _ _

Answers at the bottom of this page

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Gumnut Christmas Bells

Do you have a living Christmas tree, a cut tree or an artificial tree at your house? Whatever kind you have, it’s fun to make your own decorations to put on it. Many trees and bushes in the garden have really interesting fruits, nuts and seed pods that can make unusual and effective decorations.

You will need: large gumnuts, small macaroni, PVA Woodwork & Hobby Glue, paints, cord or raffia.

1. Firstly you need to collect the gumnuts. You need to find the large ones (see right) that come from trees like the Red-Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia - it used to be Eucalyptus ficifolia). These are often used as street trees and you can often find the gumnuts on the ground underneath the trees. Other gum trees that have big, fat gumnuts are Marri (Eucalyptus calophylla), Gungurra (E. caesia) and the Bell-fruited Mallee (E. preissiana).

2. Make sure the gumnuts are nice and clean - brush them inside and outside with a stiff paintbrush.

3. Using the smallest pieces of macaroni you can find, glue a piece on the top of each gumnut with the PVA glue. A good way to keep all the gumnuts nice and steady and sitting up the right way is to put them in egg cartons. You will have to leave the glue to dry. Wait until the next day to paint the bells.

4. You can paint the bells any colour you like, or spray paint them with gold or silver paint. You might like to decorate them with sequins or glitter. The PVA glue can be used for this too because it dries clear.

5. When the bells are dry, thread the cord or raffia through the macaroni to make a loop for hanging. Two or three bells together look better than just one on its own. Bows on the top of the bells can also look pretty.

6. Have fun hanging your decorations on the tree.

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"Found Objects" in the Garden

Gardening doesn’t have to serious. Sometimes it can be really funny and silly. You can make gardens in all sorts of crazy places and grow plants in really wacky containers that will make everyone laugh. You can guarantee that your garden will be very different from everyone else’s - and you might be surprised at how interesting and zany it all looks.

You will need: Potting mix, seeds or seedlings, dark green or dark blue plastic paint & paintbrush (optional), a bucketful of imagination!

1. Artists use the term "found objects" to apply to everyday bits and pieces (usually junk!) they use in the creation of their artworks.

2. There are lots of "found objects" that can be used as plant containers. For an object to be useful for plants, it must have enough room inside for the plant’s roots to grow. The other really important thing is that it has to have a drainage hole - or you must be able to make one. (If you find a really interesting container and you can’t make a hole, then you might be able to use it as a bird bath or to make a bog garden - I once saw a bog garden growing in an old toilet bowl!)

3. Some household junk that can make interesting plant containers include worn-out boots, suitcases with broken handles, old wheelbarrows, baby baths, broken kids’ toys such as tricycles with trays, trucks or prams, kettles and saucepans with holes in the bottom, sinks, watering cans or wooden boxes. (You can find some great stuff when the council has a "hard rubbish" collection when people put their junk on the footpath! You can also find treasures in Op Shops - and holes are an advantage! ) Sometimes you can make the objects more waterproof and help them blend in with the garden better by giving them one or more coats of paint all the one colour.

4. Another good place to look for unusual plant containers is in junk yards. Bits of machinery are often interesting shapes.

5. Found objects can also be natural things - pieces of hollow branch, burnt out stumps, driftwood, seashells (big ones!)

6. Suitable plants to put in your containers include lobelia, succulents such as echeveria & sedum, tillandsia, impatiens, viola, Virginian stock and nemesia. Keep the plants well-watered.

Illustration:
A soft shoe like this will need many coats of paint to make it weather proof. This one is best kept under cover on a verandah. Echeverias are a good choice because they don't need much water.

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This month we will show you how to make very unusual greeting cards, using plants from your garden. You will be taking photos without a camera! Your family and friends will wonder how you managed to do it.

What You Will Need: a packet of light sensitive photographic paper (a packet of 25 small sheets costs around $8 at photographic shops or some chemists); leaves and flowers, a piece of glass (the glass from an old photo frame is perfect), a black whiteboard marker, envelopes.

1. Do not open the packet of photographic paper until everything else is ready. This paper is sensitive to light so you have to be organised and work quickly.

2. First cut a piece of scrap paper slightly smaller that the packet of photo paper. You will use this to plan out your card.

3. Collect small leaves and flowers that have interesting shapes from the garden. You will be creating a silhouette of these so the shapes are very important. Seed heads of grasses turn out really well. If you don’t have any in your garden, you’ll most probably find some in a local park.

4. Using your scrap paper card, place the leaves, grass and flowers on the card. Keep the design simple and leave space in the middle for a message.

5. Place something solid like a large hard-cover book on the table ready to rest the photographic paper on.

6. Open the photographic paper in a fairly dark room. Take out one piece and seal the packet up again immediately.

7. Working quickly, place the photographic paper, shiny-side up on the book. Transfer your leaves and flowers from your scrap paper to the photographic paper. Place the piece of glass over the top to squish it down and to keep it all in place.

8. Use the whiteboard marker to write your message on to the glass above the space you left for it. Make it simple and use big, clear letters eg LOVE FROM JACK.

9. Carefully carry the whole thing outside and place it in the sun. The best time to do it is around midday. The more light there is the quicker it works. You will have to leave it in the bright light for a couple of hours. It will take longer if it’s cloudy, but it will still work.

10. When the paper around the leaves and flowers has turned a dark pinkish brown your card is ready.

11. Have an envelope the right size ready to put it in.

12. Remove the glass and the flowers and leaves. You will see their lovely shapes "photographed" in white on the card and your message also.

13. Place the card into the envelope immediately or the light will make the white parts of the card change colour too.

14. Your special cards will not last in the light. Like a flower they are just a temporary thing - but very unusual and great fun to make!

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