Implications of a New Name: How to Make a Topiary

The other week I arrived early at an early in the morning appointment in Pasadena. Because I had time to kill, I parked in a nearby shopping center thinking maybe I could do a bit of window shopping. There was an Anthropologie, one of my most favorite home/clothing stores (it would be my absolute favorite if its items weren't so unaffordable), and a perfect store for window shopping. Unfortunately, it wasn't even 9 o'clock in the morning, so Anthropologie wasn't open yet. In fact, the only store I found open at the center at that hour in the morning was a Walgreens.

I'd never thought of Walgreens as a go-to place for window shopping.

But I was bored with plenty of time to kill, so I went inside and wandered the aisles. I got asked if I needed help several times by the employees inside who were hurriedly organizing and stocking shelves before the rush of the day began. I continually said no, though I probably past by each of them three times as I looked and looked at beauty products, skin products, cards, candy, etc. I wasn't interested in anything I was looking at.

Until I found the most adorable porcelain flower pots I'd ever seen.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with them or where they would belong in my home, but I knew I wanted them. Funny enough, everything about them looks and feels as though they should have been for sale next door in Anthropologie. Everything except for the price. The price is what sold me on them. Even if I didn't know what I was going to do with them or if I had a place for them in my apartment, I knew I couldn't go wrong for $1.29 each.

$1.29 each. Can you believe it?

I took them home and admired them for a day or two, contemplating how the little cuties could be put to use and shown off. It was difficult to come up with a use for them, as I don't have any sort of a garden plot or a porch available to me and I don't have a window sill suitable for flower pots' contents to see the sunlight.

And then it came to me. TOPIARIES. Like this one. Only smaller, of course. I would make decorative topiaries out of artificial floral materials.

I didn't know how to make topiaries, though. So I googled it. I found several different instructions, all of them extremely vague for the amateur interior floral decorator, but after a little research, I felt confident that I understood the materials that I needed and the procedure for making what I wanted.

I went on a shopping spree at Michael's for my materials, then I came home and performed the following steps:

1. I unwrapped a bouquet of fake twigs. I bought the twigs to use as a topiary-trunk.

2. I cut the twigs down to the height that I wanted, being sure to use the the thicker, sturdier bottoms of the twigs rather than the thinner, flimsier stuff at the top. The tops were just wimpy, not suitable for a tree trunk, as can be seen in the above picture.

3. Using two different purchased bouquets of twigs, I made two tree trunks by twisting the twigs together and rubber banding them at the ends. I made the trunks differ in height by a few inches on purpose.

4. Next, I used modeling clay to form a sturdy base at one end of each trunk.

6. I inserted the clay bases into my adorable porcelain pots, and kept packing in the clay until it was obvious that the trunks weren't going anywhere anytime soon.

7. I opened up my bag of preserved moss and hot glued a few pieces around the circumference of the base of each tree trunk. Then I packed more moss all around the clay surface in the flower pot so that no more clay could be spotted.

8. I stuffed the tops of the trunks into the center of two styrofoam balls. I felt like the topiaries were missing something (besides the greenery that still had to be applied to the foam balls), so I tied some pretty ribbon to the tree trunks. Apparently my cat was a bit jealous that every item on the table BUT HIM had made it into a picture, so he slyly snuck his way in to one.