Sunshine Botanical Designs

As a very young girl growing up on 75 acre farm in rural northwest New Jersey in a beautiful town called Sparta, I was introduced to every aspect of planting huge acres of vegetable gardens with my grandfather. We planted everything by hand. He taught me how to prepare the soil and tender plants so they would grow and produce to maximum vitality and capacity. People would come as far away as New York City and Pennsylvania just to buy bushel baskets full of my grandfather’s farm fresh produce and all the other amazing things my grandmother would make and sell from their labor of love, they named Hilltop Farm.

Grandma and grandpa would have the most beautiful flowers and flowering bushes. We had white, lavender and deep purple lilacs and one entire side of the yard was covered in roses and the other with wisteria and bleeding heart bushes. We had apple, pear, cherry and chestnut trees in the back yard and a grape arbor that was heavy with purple clumps of fruit. Inside the house was just as green and alive with large Boston and asparagus ferns in colorful urns, hanging Christmas cactus, and beautiful African violets in every blooming color, to name just a few. 

Another wonderful feature of growing up in such a remote setting was all the beautiful pine trees filled with cones and fields of wildflowers in every color you could imagine. Beautiful mosses and ferns would grow along the ice cold ground fed streams that flowed into a big pond behind the barns. The tall dark cattails would grow in the marsh portion next to the pond and the woods were filled with interesting trees, rocks, pods, seeds and bark of every kind. I ask you, how could one grow up with such an abundant source of materials and not develop a deep sense of appreciation for all that nature provides us.

At the holidays we would make beautiful wreaths from the fresh ground pines and add the cones that had fallen from one of hundreds of pine and spruce trees. Every size and shape cone and berry was available. I would walk down the road in spring, summer and late fall and head out through the fields and collect armfuls of wildflowers that I would turn into all types of floral arrangements, and various other crafts.

After I was grown and moved to Louisville, KY my love of gardening, designing and crafting continued, only now on a smaller scale due to apartment and small backyard living. I turned to container gardens and terrariums. Not only can you still grow vegetable and herb gardens and create beautiful wreaths and floral arrangements, you can design small mini landscapes and gardenscapes, all within a very contained, small, manageable area.