For those of you with limited dining table space who need a floral arrangement which is not too overwhelming in stature and height, try this floral arrangement which compacts rose heads. I've seen this type of floral arrangement in flower shops in Europe, and sometimes in dazzling floral demonstrations. It can be done for any occasion, and in any color. It is a design concept, which can inspire you to create an arrangement of your own.

I have an antique dining table which is very long and narrow. I love our table, but it is always a little challenging to get candles, place settings, and sometimes flowers squeezed in. I did this arrangement for our Christmas dinner, and it worked out well.

This floral arrangement starts with a table oasis which you can readily find at floral supply stores. The oasis is soaked in water as usual, and then placed in a plastic form box which keeps your tablecloth and table dry. I choose white roses, but you can choose any color rose which compliments your particular theme.

Start with fresh roses, and cut them at an angle to about 3-4" in length. Line them up, shoulder to shoulder in your oasis. Remember that your roses will continue to open up, and expand in your floral arrangement. Creating this arrangement 2 days ahead allows the roses to open more, and fill in the arrangement with a mass look.

For greenery, I clipped foliage from my garden. I found green boxwood, feathery cypress, chartreuse euonymus tips, and blooming blue rosemary. You might have berries, pods, and other blooming shrubs to use from your garden. Green foliage is placed horizontally in the floral arrangement to hang over sides, cover your oasis, and complete the look.

This arrangement will last longer than usual because the water has less distance to travel to the rose head. Check every few days if your oasis is still moist.

Please share if you create a special floral arrangement for your holiday table. Please share if you are familiar with this type of floral arrangement.

I want to share with you some of the exceptional places that I come across from time to time. These places are gems and not to be missed if you are in the area, or they could even be a destination. Most have a “garden thread” to them. “Places To Know” can be retail, restaurants, nurseries, and other. Whatever the place, expect the unusual.

Meet Kathryn, owner of Kathryn Originals, at the Saturday Vista Farmers Market in North San Diego County. She creates magical blouses, jackets, skirts, aprons, and more out of beautiful vintage fabrics. Original vintage fabrics that were once tablecloths, drapes, embroidered linens, and chenille bedspreads are transformed by her sewing artistry, into a beautiful piece of clothing.

Each of her pieces  are unique. She sews amazing clothing details, using thread colors, quilt-like fabric combinations, and vintage buttons. She carries all sizes, and styles. Her designs are perfect gifts for the gardeners in your life, year-round, and for the holidays.

If you can't make the Saturday morning Vista Farmers Market, Kathryn has her designs and creations available online, too, Kathryn's Originals, (tel) (760) 643-1127. Her line of original clothing made from vintage natural fabrics are all works of art in themselves. Stop by and see Kathryn, and tell her VintageGardenGal sent you.

Look  for all of your tucked away garden trugs,  and use them for entertaining, like this one re-purposed for a fall buffet.

A vintage garden trug, dated 1962, and purchased at a flea market a few years ago, adds "oohs" and "aahs" when guests start serving themselves to a little morning brunch. Turned upside down, and strategically placed on the table, this trug gives a special occasion dish added height, interest and character. Clipped branches of bay laurel leaves garnish the corners.

Garden trugs are traditionally a shallow basket usually made out of strips of wood, intended to hold cut flowers or fresh produce. They can be re-purposed for many uses, from garden to home.

Goat Cheese, Smoked Ham, and Artichoke Strata, Bon Appetit 1997, is the dish highlighted on the vintage trug. This recipe is supreme for any special occasion from Christmas morning to Easter Brunch. This recipe is a favorite among my garden friends, and my first introduction to it.

It requires quite a few different ingredients, and time assembling, but well worth it at the first bite. To help a hostess further,  it can be made a day ahead and chilled. For vegetarians, smoked ham can be replaced with fresh spinach.

Please share how you use your garden trugs. Please comment on your favorite trug.

VintageGardenGal Tidbit Thyme....

Timber Press has a new book out,  Concrete Garden Projects. This book offers up an inspiring array of creative projects that can be made for next to nothing. Follow the easy, step-by-step instructions to make containers of all sizes, benches and stools, ponds and birdbaths, pavers and stepping stones — and even a barbecue.

Celebrating the release of Concrete Garden Projects, Timber Press is hosting a two-week long giveaway from October 11-21, 2011, where entrants can win a copy of the book, a $25 gift certificate to Home Depot, and a set of molds. Readers can enter by submitting their email address at, Concrete Garden Projects. Good luck!

When my husband and I remodeled a year ago, I carved out a perfect office and workshop area in a single car garage. With the addition of our new master bedroom wing, it created this small, private, very intimate garden room which I can look out and access from my office and workshop. I planted a Podocarpus hedge along the north fence on one side, a row of espaliered Silver Wave Camellias along the stucco wing on the south side, and the third side was my very old working garden shed to the west.

In the middle of this garden room, I created a pea gravel square edged with dwarf Euonymus and placed my vintage garden baby fountain smack in the middle. My garden baby fountain, see Everyone Loves a "Garden Baby"  finally had a permanent home, after years of transit traveling around my garden.

The reason I'm describing all of this in detail is because I had an unappealing open door and side of my garden shed which desperately needed some sprucing up. The answer was burlap, the reasonable landscape burlap which has incredible texture, durability, and vintage-like appeal. This is another idea for garden economizing--reasonable landscape burlap as a material. If you don't know about it, you must look for it at your garden and landscape centers. I find my burlap locally at Grangetto's. You can also be creative and re-purpose coffee burlap bags.

I created a small vignette with an old warped wood table, matching symmetrical pots, a pair of young cypress trees for height, and blue-gray shutters for interest and color repetition.  I pulled out my "dusty but trusty" sewing machine, and loosely measured my spaces as everything was uneven. Presto, a working burlap curtain door, and a sweet table skirt for my table. I secured hidden dowels to hang the burlap for my shed opening and table. I also dug out one of my old hooks, and placed it on the side of my shed for a quick way to hold up the burlap curtain door when I needed the large opening.

What a difference, and what beauty in this burlap. Think of this landscape burlap material when you have a project where it might conveniently lend itself. Please share if you use this burlap material already in your garden. Please comment on creative ways you have worked with this burlap.

Vertical gardening is a hot trend right now, and an easy way to grow one of my favorite squashes, the climbing Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga. No more space in your garden, try planting your seeds at the base of a fence or an arbor. It is a multifaceted squash, beautiful in it's vining fashion and prolific in it's numerous elongated squash fruit. It's squash quickly can reach 15" and longer.

This Italian heirloom beauty is a great sweet-flavored green summer squash if picked young, or keep it on the vine, and it turns into a toffee colored, slightly nutty tasting winter squash. Seeds are found in the bottom bulbous portion of the squash fruit, hence it is ideal for sautéing or stuffing. It's huge yellow squash blossoms are delicious and can be eaten, too.

I started my Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga squash easily from seed in the spring, and then transplanted it into my garden as thriving seedlings. It takes the heat well, and seems adaptable for most climates. One of the  online  sources  for Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga is Baker Heirloom Seeds.

I've even saved my toffee-colored Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga squash for fall decorations amongst my pumpkins. It's shape adds a nice contrast to round pumpkins, and fall gourds.

Please share if you have grown Zucchetta Tromba D'Albenga in your garden. Please comment on your favorite squash to grow.

One of my favorite trees is the evergreen Magnolia grandiflora Little Gem. I love it's shiny green and brown foliage as much as it's magnificent white 5-6" blossoms. It is perfection. This bee was so happy, I could of sworn it was dancing.

The Magnolia Little Gem is a dwarf Southern Magnolia with dark green foliage and a compact upright form suitable for smaller gardens and planting areas. It can reach 20 to 25' high and 10-15' wide. These magnolia's can be espaliered and coaxed into shapes. I have two Magnolia Little Gems fan-espaliered in my front flower beds against white stucco walls, and one stand-alone growing upright with the beginnings of an arch welcoming those entering my driveway.

Magnolia Little Gem, likes full sun, moderate water, and are optimally grown in zones 7-9. Not all magnolias are evergreen, but this variety is. It is a heavy bloomer, blooming from early spring through late summer with it's magnificent billowy pure white flowers. Once the flower is spent, each flower pod continues to dry intact, adding further interest and character. These trees are relatively disease and pest resistant. A Magnolia Little Gem can be grown successfully in a container, and placed on a sunny patio or deck.

I like to decorate around the holidays with boughs of magnolia branches on front doors, holiday tables, across fireplace mantles, and along railings. It's deep green glossy leaves, paired with a rust-brown under side, bordering on copper is is a natural and eye-catching style for the holidays.

Please share if you have a Magnolia Little Gem in your garden.

Last weekend, I experienced this year's  Secret Garden Tour of La Jolla, and was thrilled at the homes and gardens showcased on the tour. Each home had an Artist in the Garden, Designer in the Garden, and Musicians in the Garden, which elevated the garden settings to poetry.

At one of my favorite homes on the tour, this historic 1925 home was decorated in tasteful architectural salvage. The table display, and Designers in the Garden, were Etceteras in La Jolla. I loved their entire table vignette, but was absolutely smitten by their vintage frog place card holders. I had never seen them so small and dainty. A perfect anchor for a name card.

The entire place setting with the pewter cups, peacocks, fruit, woven  twig place mats all  worked  together to create a warm and inviting table.

Vintage flower frogs are fun to collect, and can re-purposed for holding table place setting, cherished photos, bills, business cards, and even their original purpose--flowers. Vintage flower frogs can be found at shops like Etceteras, fleas markets, garage sales, and online.

VintageGardenGal Tidbit Thyme...

Attention Chicken Lovers! Spruce up your chicken coop for VintageGardenGal's Annual Chicken Coop Photo Contest. Send in your photos this month to bonnie@vintagegardengal.com

On the recent tour of this year's Encinitas Garden Festival, one of the private gardens had a beautiful white-picket fence enclosing an immaculate raised bed vegetable garden. Adjacent to the vegetable garden was an open area with a pathway and fruit trees. In addition, there was a fabulous focal point of creative staggered containers, using wine boxes, galvanized tubs, and burlap bags. Something so simple, with a "wow" factor. It is structural, functional, beautiful, clever, and unique all in one. Hats off to this homeowner, and their herb garden.

This is reminiscent of an idea in Rosalind Creasy's new book, Edible Landscaping, where she describes how to stagger and arrange different size half-wine barrels for a perfect container grouping.

Most of these containers can be found in local farm and garden supply stores, such as Grangettos, Home Depot, or even flea markets for the weathered and rusty look. Look around your garage, sheds, utility areas for possible containers you might already have. Wine boxes can be found at wine shops, wineries, and friends who are in wine clubs.

It is still important to create holes for drainage in the case of the galvanzied tubs, and line the wooden wine boxes with heavy plastic, small rocks for drainage, and then your preferred soil. Eventually burlap bags will break down exposed to weather elements, but will hold up through a few seasons. Gardener's burlap is strong, yet very reasonable, coming in ready-sewn bags, or longer sheets of material.

With very little expense, and a lot of creativity, you might be able to create a unique container focal point in your garden, too.

VintageGardenGal Tidbit Thyme...

Attention Chicken Lovers! Spruce up your chicken coop for VintageGardenGal's Annual Chicken Coop Photo Contest. Send in your photos this month to bonnie@vintagegardengal.com