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Our Spring Garden DIY & Update ~ A Pinterest Challenge

Welcome to  this month’s Pinterest Challenge where a group of friends gets together and finds inspiration from a given Pinterest pin with which to create something beautiful. Cindy of County Road 407 is our host and this month we were given an idea to create a garden fountain. Let’s tour my garden, mes amies…

Like on our inspiration piece, a little butterfly has come to visit le jardin… A corner off our patio.

Patience

Our garden is very much a work in progress and is barely a year old. New plants go in the ground and into pots as money comes available. I recently finished a small patio area for our trash bins and am noodling ideas for keeping dirt down under the oaks here in the backyard. 


Thinking about bricking the whole thing although laying faux grass would be cheaper ~ and what Mr. Ethereal would like to do.

If you are coming over from Laura of Everyday Edits for the first time, welcome to my home and garden! Laura’s flower pots out front look beautiful, don’t they? She made me laugh with her post on The Five Dog Items to Clean More Often. Humor and style, the best!!!  Welcome back to all my other friends, too, as I am always happy when you come and visit me.
😊

Our Pinterest Challenge garden fountain comes to us from Jane of Cottage at the Crossroads, a new blog to me. Jane and her husband Leo write from their 100 year old home and they have created a totally adorable cascading waterfall of Topsy Turvy Galvanized Buckets overflowing with plants. So adorable!

Tumbling flower pots


Jane and Leo used a plastic insert kit to create this waterfall of four galvanized metal buckets, a galvanized tub, plus a variety of coral flowers ~ totally love their cheerfulness! I have a bunch of clay pots but I thought there’s no way I could recreate this look with them. Too fragile.

However…

I have had an idea for awhile to create a real water fountain from a galvanized horse trough, and you’ll see that in this next series of photographs. 

Water fountain ideas


My inspiration piece… The owner of The Victorian Sample Florist created this water fountain from a large oval galvanized trough surrounded by stacked paving rocks and a hidden piping system going up into the building’s wall.

This is the  Secret Garden in Corsicana, Texas that I wrote about last fall.
We have a similar brick wall in our backyard along our garage and this is where I’d like to have our water fountain. This whole month I have wracked my brain every since knowing of this particular Pinterest Challenge on how to create this fountain. Not everything is available online and many companies without online presence are just getting their websites up and running to meet demand. That was the challenge I found trying to create what I wanted to do for you! 

Watering troughs are easy to find locally and they run about $50-$70 depending upon the size needed. I am also looking for the perfect piece to have water spill from, so no horse trough water fountain right now.


*On a side note: While I was working on this post, I came across a company which sells galvanized chicken feeders and other poultry supplies ~ Premier 1 Supplies ~ in case you’d like some feeders for your brood. Chickens are also something I think about having in our garden. They are perfect bug removers!

🐓


My other thought was creating a fountain out of clay troughs and/or actual water fountain tiers but no luck there. My favorite stores for buying unusual size planters and pots are not open at present and these pieces I would need to create my fountain’s layers (if I go this route instead of the horse trough idea). I am also looking for the perfect piece to have water spill from, so…yeah.

I have come up with another type of waterfall, if you will, based off of our inspiration piece and it begins here…

Nursery inspiration

They have statuary and concrete bird baths, full-size trees and
old roses set in garden rooms… It’s an ethereal place!
I just found Meador’s Nursery this past week and it has been under my nose for a year now! It is still open because contractors need supplies for landscaping, hence the public can also shop ~ which gives me an open place to visit and shop for garden supplies.

Everyone wore face masks and the staff wore hats with face shields in addition to their own face masks ~ it is the first time I’ve felt free to wander since early March. What a delight!

For this fountain, part of me is thinking of using a medium-size watering trough or very large half round clay squat pot which will fit my space better as a recycling water fountain (like that in the Secret Garden). 


Garden plans

This is what I have come up with instead for you ~ a three-tiered plant stand. I saw this cute stand earlier this week at Meador’s and thought it was perfect. I have been looking for a plant stand to create a little herb garden in now I just need to find the right pots. Cindy’s post gave me an idea to look for small galvanized metal trays and pots to decorate this plant stand with ~ so now you know where this is going! 🙂

🌸


After finishing doing some volunteer work for school last Friday I headed back to Meador’s to pick up this stand.



This new rose bush is appropriately named “Iceberg.”
A white rose bush might have come home with me, too… 
😉

“Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.”
Author Unknown
In addition to finding a rose bush and then this plant stand coming home to the garden, I have been watching period films again. Last year I wrote about some garden shows to watch and one in particular is a movie: A Little Chaos which stars Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman. 

Madame Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet) and famed French garden designer
André le Nôtre (Matthias Shoenaerts) 
It is a fictional story of the real André le Nôtre (1613-1700) and Kate Winslet’s fictional character, Madame Sabine de Barra, together creating one spectacular garden, tiered fountain and outdoor ballroom, part of the massive gardens in the countryside which would become King Louis XIV’s gardens at Versailles.

Madame de Barra experiencing a healing wish garden where people would come to remember loved ones.

“In every gardener there is a child who believes in 

The Seed Fairy.” 

Robert Breault

Talk about inspiration! The whole movie is a magical fairyland and then had me thinking our garden could be Un Petit Versailles… in the future. Just now it is still a garden in process…


I love my new little tiered plant stand and as time goes on it’ll
be styled prettily!


I hope you’ve enjoyed this petit tour of our garden and my garden inspiration today. 


Up next is Julie of My Wee Abode whose garden project is really cool! I love everything Julie creates for her home out by the beaches in Southern California. 💝 I know you will love seeing all the amazing creations these ladies have dreamed up for you! 

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Happy gardening, friends,
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