The Year of the Bottles at Summer Celebration-UT Jackson Part II

Part II of our trip to the University of Tennessee's Annual Summer Celebration sees a LOT more bottles and garden art. Let's start with these strings of wine bottles hanging from a tree limb.

How about a huge bottle tree? I think this bottle tree was made from an old cedar tree. I too have a cedar bottle tree in my garden and I love it. I can honestly say the cedar holds up pretty well to the weight of the bottles but with time, the branches will slowly become flexible and will tilt down to the ground following the pull of gravity. This can make a problem for moisture getting into the bottles and the bottles falling off from the tree. You should plan for this happen and help to prevent it by choosing thick sturdy branches to place your bottles on. These branches should be distinctly upright in their habit. If you need more places to hang bottles then I have found long lag bolts drilled into the tree work well and don't sag.

Rolls of barbed wire can be beautiful when displayed in a garden. It is that timeless theme of circles with the added benefit of the new 'in' theme called 'rust in a garden'.

How about this mailbox fitted into a cedar tree? Mr. Fix-it and I are trying to decide what kind of mailbox we can put on our rather isolated country road in order to protect it from hooliganism. This idea might work! I believe this mailbox was left over from a previous Summer Celebration where the theme involved mailboxes. Mailboxes in a garden are a great idea!

Now we are coming to some specifics. Anyone who lives or visits Tennessee during this time of the year will be introduced to fireflies. It is a major but simple pleasure of Tennessee summers and I made sure to introduce my sister and her family to Tennessee's fireflies on her recent visit here to Tiger Gardens. I was super excited to see not only fireflies but dragonflies highlighted at Summer Celebration and to show my sister's two young granddaughters the sparkly Tennessee evening thanks to fireflies.

These fireflies were made by taking small bottles and filling the bottles with shiny ribbon (from the gift wrap section of your local department store) and adding some wings made of wire wrapped around another wire frame. The effect when these small bottles are hung in a tree is that the bottles appear to glow and cannot be mistaken for anything but fireflies. These were splendid! If you make some make lots because they look best en masse.

In the same bed and display area as the fireflies were these dragonflies made from a spherical piece of metal with four wine bottles attached. The whole thing was then mounted to a pole and placed in the garden. What a creative way to display wine bottles! Dragonflies are also a mainstay of Tennessee and most appropriate to this year's Summer Celebration....

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

A New Bottle Tree in Tiger Way Gardens

There is nothing like a bottle tree to cheer the landscape. I recently installed a new one out on the land in the orchard. I had purchased this hanging bottle tree at the Nashville Lawn and Garden Show last March but had no place to install it--until now. I initially thought I'd hang it from a tree but then remembered I have a powerful arbor (formerly the wisteria arbor in Tiger Gardens but now the grape/kiwi arbor in Tiger Way Gardens) in the orchard that would be a perfect foil for this hanging bottle tree.

A simple chain with a latch was all I needed to hang this bottle tree. I looped the chain around a 2'x6' cross beam and hooked the bottle tree to it. The bottle tree holds 20 bottles but so far it only has 12 on it as I need to bring more out there. I want to make sure it will be safe before I totally fill it up as I am not sure how much it will swing and sway in the winds. But for now it is a lovely little highlight of color hanging out in the orchard. 

The gardens are really shaping up at Tiger Way Gardens and it so comforting to me that I am lucky enough to have the time to slowly move things out there and recreate as many of my current gardens as I possibly can. Bottle trees will be a real big part of that re-creation you can bet!

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

The 2014 Nashville Lawn and Garden Show

Good morning! This has been such a busy week for me I can't tell you how tired I am but it is a good tired I suppose. Yesterday my friend Vonna and I traveled to the Nashville Lawn and Garden Show. We had a really wonderful day at the show and in Nashville. Of course, Vonna is one of those friends I always have a wonderful day with! 

The Nashville Lawn and Garden Show is one of those 'I can't miss gardening events'. If you are planning to go you will have fun! It is open today, tomorrow and Sunday so there is still plenty of time. Sunday is often a day the vendors will make you some good deals so they don't have to haul  their stock back to their businesses, but any day is a good day to visit this show. 

I'm going to share with you all some pictures of things that interested me at the show. The above sculpture was quite a departure from the show. In years past I can't ever remember seeing a sculpture like this in the garden. The display was quite eye catching.

This year's theme is 'Wine and Roses' and I believe there will be a wine festival in conjunction with the show that starts today and goes through Saturday. Vonna and I did not sample any wine but we saw lots of wine bottles. This display was very innovative. I loved it!

The set up was so simple but yet so eye catching. The lights surrounding the bottles were simply a section of rope lights. 

I also enjoyed this swag across a doorway complete with a shelf of wine bottles. I did not check to see if the bottles were full or not....

Each year I snap a picture of a water feature at the show and each year that picture is always a frequently Googled picture. This one was a bit different than usual in that it had a waterfall coming off the roof of a 'hut' on a pond. Very nice.

A gazebo contained a whole bunch of orchids. Loved it!
 
A little pocket garden fits into this spot perfectly.

On our way out we noticed this beautiful rose and wine set up. It's the perfect spot to sit for a while--but please do take the time to smell the roses as every single one of them was real! And ever so gorgeous. The colors shine in this display and it was a touchable display. So beautiful...

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

Wine Bottle Edged Greenhouse & More

From In the Garden

After the greenhouse was set up work was still not done. In fact, I'd hesitate to guess it had only just begun judging by how long it took me to seal and reinforce the greenhouse. I also added a nice edging to the eastern side of the greenhouse.

I already talked of how I had to order more (40) clips to be sure the panels were firmly in place. This helped a bit but the top and bottom of the panels rested on the aluminum members with no way to hold the panels steady. I opted to insert some screws through the panels and to caulk the entire panel to the aluminum frame. I'm happy to say the panels are now firmly set in place and don't appear to be leaking. There are still some air holes that need some attention though. The spots on the roof where the vents are located are not well sealed. I will look at them later because it is vitally important (IMHO) that a greenhouse be well sealed in order to heat it during cold nights. Fortunately it is spring and I suspect the greenhouse will stay warm enough for the few things I have already located to it. Most of my plants were wintered over in the garage where the temperature dropped to a low of 40 degrees. Forty to fifty degrees is my benchmark for keeping the greenhouse warm. I hope passive heating methods and seedling heat pads will help keep the greenhouse above the target temperature during the winter but I'll have to trial it and see what will work best for me.

One other thing I did with my greenhouse is I oriented the opening to the south. The long sides get both the eastern and western sunshine, albeit this sunshine is a bit low in the winter when the sun is in the southern hemisphere. For my garden purposes this orientation worked best. I think most greenhouses are oriented with the long sides facing south though I'm not sure. I insulated the northern side of my greenhouse with very thick polystyrene panels that are lined with foil. The foil faces in toward the heated part. The sun will never hit this side of the greenhouse and I wanted to cut down on the cold north wind coming to the greenhouse on this side so the insulation serves that purpose and gives me a 'static' wall.

Now changing the subject to my greenhouse edging, Skeeter had been saving wine bottles for me for a l-o-n-g time. I knew I wanted a bottle edged garden at some point and figured it would take a lot of bottles. I had no idea how many bottles I had until I began cleaning my garage and found box after bag after wagon full of wine bottles. It is nice to have them out of the garage!

When the greenhouse came along I came up with a better idea to line one side of this greenhouse instead of creating a new garden with bottles for edging. The bottles are on the eastern side of the greenhouse and since this garden is not in a high traffic area of my yard I think these bottles will be safe from breakage. The greenhouse protects them on one side and there are tons of plants on the other side. I alternated between the clear and green bottles and am rather pleased with the striped effect. It wasn't difficult planting these bottles....

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team,

In the Garden