Wardian Case - White Garden - Completion

After deciding on my final plants and selecting them from the nursery, I potted them up into presentation terracotta pots with grey gravel mulch.
The climbing plant that I chose, Tecomanthe speciosa, was more of a challenge to pot up. We did not have a young plant in the nursery, so instead I took a cutting from a mature plant. This was not ideal because it was not likely to survive very long in a pot, but for the purpose of completing the temporary display it would have to suffice.

Here is the final case.

Once the case was cleaned up and fresh plants put in, it looked great. I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Here is the display signs I made for the case. Using a combination of Word and Photoshop to create the graphics. I tried to keep the explanation simple as I knew I had limited space, and I feel I could have elaborated a lot more on the design techniques. However, the more text there is the less likely people are to stand and read it. So I kept it short and simple.

I was pleased with the layout of these pages. I was aiming for a magazine style spread with visible text boxes, bite- sized info, and basic care instructions.

Overall I was rather pleased with the whole project and really enjoy it. I like garden design and would happily do more design projects again. Selecting plants to fit in a specific environment is interesting, and great for learning more about particular plants. Its not as simple as just picking a few attractive plants and putting them all together because they might need different care and watering. Plants need to be selected carefully with long term growth kept in mind.

Wardian case - White Garden - Plant selection

As one of my apprentice projects at Otari I need to select some plants to be displayed in the Wardian case, write some info about the plants, and look after them.

I got my inspration for a white garden from both my recent visit to Sissinghurst, but also from watering the Celmisia collection in the nursery. I initially thought about displaying the celmisia collection until I found out it had already been done.
So I started noticing just how many plants in Otari have silvery foliage or white flowers - a heck of a lot, so I had plenty of choice of plants to create my own White Garden.

After some research and plant identification I selected the plants I wanted from the nursery...

Astelia nervosa. Silvery and stripy. 

Euphorbia glauca. Very pale and interesting.

Hebe albicans. Because I couldn't not use a hebe!

Pimelea prostrata. Low wide spread groundcover. I more I see
this plant, the more I like it.

Pacystegia insignis. Awesome thick dark green leaves with white
 undersides. Only downside is that the center of the flower is yellow
...but I like it soo much, so i'm gonna use it anyway.

My initial collection - still slightly undecided on which climber
I want, and small tree.