Writers Abroad Magazine Issue 3 September 2015 | Page 41

WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE
right size holes in damp soil to insert single leaves off succulent plants, which would
then take root.
Then I made some expensive mistakes by planting indoor and outdoor plants together
in the same pot. The miniature firs wanted to be outside, the plant known variously as
Baby`s Tears or Mind-Your-Own-Business or Irish Moss is a sensitive indoor plant and
didn`t take to being outside in the sun at all. In the winter, I brought them all inside,
only to discover that the firs were very upset at this as the air was too warm and dry,
so they went into a decline and dropped their needles.
If a plant in a miniature garden dies, it has to be replaced — a fiddly business as you
have to be careful not to disturb the whole arrangement. Needless to say, the local
garden centre rolled out the carpet and made me a coffee every time I arrived, as I left
a large part of the housekeeping money in their till. I was lucky though, in finding a
young man there whose father made model railway landscapes, so he was used to
being asked about how to sow "to scale" lawns and if there was such a thing as ivy
with leaves smaller than 1 cm. (There isn`t.) To find out about the grass, the man
suggested I contact the Deutsche Rasengesellschaft, an association here in Germany
completely devoted to grass — the green kind — and ask them what I could do to get
a realistic miniature lawn. They wrote back suggesting a mixture of two different seeds
and went to great lengths to explain to me the lengths and breadth of the blades of
various types of grasses. And there was me thinking it was just that green stuff
underfoot!
Eventually, as one does when one has a problem, I turned to Google. I typed in
"miniature garden" and sat back. Oh my giddy aunt. There was me thinking I`d
invented the wheel and there was the US of A who had been doing this for years, had
garden centres exclusively geared to this hobby and mail order firm millionaires whose
wealth was built on mini-gardeners demanding pillars, statues, flowerpots and swings
for their projects. Feeling an utter fool, I turned to YouTube and watched videos of
people sieving, scooping, laying patios and entering prestigious competitions.
Two Green Thumbs in the USA sells lovely garden fittings, but unfortunately don`t sell
plants by mail order. WA

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