Towards the end of 2014 our great friend Mary gave us two old butler sinks to make into miniature alpine gardens. Soon after this a sudden illness took Mary from us. We turned the sinks into gardens just as she wanted us too, so we now think of them as Mary’s Mini-Gardens.
We gathered together a few big chunks of slate, a bag of slate pieces, a bag of John Innes No 3 compost, a bag of horticultural grit and one of horticultural sand together with a lump hammer and bolster chisel. The horticultural grit and sand were mixed with the compost in equal parts to create our growing medium.
We were lucky to have found two large pieces of slate with holes in to add a sculptural element to our mini-gardens.
One piece of slate had beautiful colour and texture to it to add further interest. It looked like a mountain range in miniature!
We added the growing medium to the sinks and put a mulch of grit on top for extra drainage around the base of the plants. We then played around with positioning the large slate pieces until we thought they formed the best arrangement we could manage.
We then began arranging the plants and once we felt they were in the best positions we planted them up.
When we opened our garden in mid-April for the National Garden Scheme they were beginning to look colourful and drew some complimentary comments from our visitors.
Here they are in mid-May. We really enjoyed the project and feel sure Mary would have enjoyed them. Good example of recycling in the garden too!
greenbenchramblings 
One reply on “Mary’s mini-garden”
They are beautiful, Mary is smiling, and you get to have such warm feelings when you look at them – all good things. 🙂