What was once a giant old growth tree is now a stump - and a big one at that. The property across the street was cleared by a developer and as a result, this tree had to be cut down or risk it falling on the house in the next storm. It seemed so sad to me to let what was once such a grand several hundred year old tree sit there all alone and be useless. What to do with said stump? Eventually it would become a nurse log, but not for many years. In the meantime, I decided it could have a glorious new life as a grand flower pot holder and backdrop to the monolithic boulder garden that nature had already provided me with:
A bunch of weeding around the boulders left me with a fabulous grouping of rose campion and out of this picture is a grove of foxglove growing at and on the base of this stump.
To create the hanging parts on the stump, I found three 5 dollar plant hangers at the local hardware store and also dug around the garage to find several 3+ inch screws 'cause the tiny ones that came with the hangers were so not gonna hold these onto this stump. Nopers. This bad boy has 2+ inch thick bark in the thin spots! I recruited the hubby to drill these into the stump and then found some ginormous hanging baskets at the local farmers market to hang from them (and they had to be really big - this is no small stump!).
Next I had to find a giant pot to set on top - and it had to be really, really big. A medium or even kinda-large pot would get lost on top of this big stump. After looking around, I finally found one at Costco of all places and filled it with flowers.
Getting it up on top of this giant stump was quite a feat in itself by the way; big thanks go to the extra-muscular hubby for placing it up there. A very tall ladder and much clever maneuvering later and it was in place. I couldn't even water the thing until it was on top as it would have been much too heavy even for for Mr. Muscles to move.
Here's how the pot on top went together:
One giant non-ceramic pot from Costco (ceramic would have been way too heavy to get up on top of the stump). Don't laugh. It was a nice looking giant pot and was fairly cheap considering the size of the thing.
Two large clearance hanging baskets of yellow petunias. (I can't believe these were on clearance - they were gorgeous!)
Two pots of campanula.
A four-pack of creeping jenny plants.
2 bags of local organic potting soil.
A watering can of water and a scoop of miracle grow (which I only use in pots and not on in-ground plants).
I took the petunias out of the hanging baskets, stuffed all these plants in the pot together, and arranged them so I thought they looked pretty, and ta-da!:
Gorgeous pot to top the grand old stump with. It turned out better than I thought it was going to. I just love it when that happens. :)
1 comment:
I love what you've done with this stump! Your blog is so interesting (as a Fort Worth gardener, I appreciate the sharing of your love of gardening. May I please post the stump photo on my Pinterest garden page? I understand if you'd rather not.
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