Friday, January 25, 2013

How does your Garden Grow? Mine's with Junk!

     One of my favorite magazines just came to my local Walmart (and of course, I HAD to buy it), so this prompted me to end the seige of no blogs and start the new year off with one of my favorite subjects.... Junk Gardening!
           When you're an antique/junker and you love gardening, it's hard not to mix the two.  My validation that I'm not totally off my crazy junking rocker is that I'm definitely not alone in my quest for mixing antique/vintage/rusty/found objects/junk with my flower beds and patios.  I also validate my obsession with the number of followers and pins from by Junk Style Gardens board on Pinterest and the many boards on that subject (here's a list just typing in the words junk garden of boards created about the subject).
         I'm also magazine obsessed with anything about garden related subjects to get ideas.(and these are just a FEW)
     I have longed for a cool garden/green house shed made with old materials.  I enlisted my guy, Willie, to make me my dream greenhouse out of old windows I'd been collecting, but sadly we left the windows outside and the weather has gotten the best of them so we're going to have to go searching for more windows.

  Many years ago, my dad build this little shed for mom to use for her gardening tools and the grand kids to use as a play house, but time and bad weather have taken their tole on it.

   Since my love of old and preserving it's beauty, still sees potential in this old shed,  I've suggested to my honey that maybe we could turn this into a shed/greenhouse combo.  Here's what I'd like it to become:
Here's the link for this  greenhouse shed.  Since, I doubt this is going to happen, I'll have to use my imagination to make it my own Junk style Shed!
       I know that once Spring rolls around, antiquer/junker shopper start looking for garden related junk for patios, homes and their actual gardens, so we at Sisters Treasures are prepared to meet that need.  I'm in the process of getting my license to sell plants so I can share my special love of succulents in particular with our shoppers.  I love to find unusal vintage items to plant my succulents in as well as to decorate my garden.  I'm into upcycling treasures into garden statues and bird baths and birdhouses.  Here's one project I'm working on:
 I'm combining a chippy plaster lamp base with the glass shade from a standing lamp that broke to make a cute birdbath.  I've taken several old lamps and made them into garden statues or ornaments and have sold them.
 I have a pair of these old paster lamps I converted in my garden.  The only downside is that the plaster cracks with age and exposure to the sun so I have to do some repairs on the mate to this one.
      I'll end this junk garden post with some of the junk items we have for sale this year:


Succulents in old tins

Succulents in chicken feeders

more succulents in kitchen tools like this rusty sifter

Screen doors have so much potential on a patio or in a garden... trellis?  potting bench backdrop?


birdcages and garden statues are always available with us.

  Here in Texas it's been in or near the 70s all week so it's hard not to start thinking of Spring, but if you're in the cold, cold North, perhaps this blog will be an imaginary escape of what's to come! 
  Thanks for reading,
   Betsy

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