Little Altars Everywhere: Miniature Prayer Gardens

The Mini Garden Guru

She Sells Sanctuary: Miniature Prayer Gardens

Miniature prayer gardens or miniature meditation gardens have been a favorite theme for me for almost as long as the idea of gardening in miniature. Here are some photo from our miniature garden archives and from a display at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in 2011. It was called the “Eat, Pray, Love, Garden” and it included three miniature gardens that depicted the eat, the pray and the love themes respectively.

In this crazy world, we a need for a peaceful place to go. A place for our heads to escape to, if only for a few minutes at a time.

Here are some thoughts on the basics of creating your own little sanctuary, a place you can go to pray, meditate or just to sit and listen. These ideas can be applied to your “full-sized” gardens quite easily too.

 

 

Ideas for Miniature…

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Keep Gardening This Winter with Indoor Miniature Gardens

The Mini Garden Guru

You can create little worlds that are all your own with miniature dish gardening.

Keep Gardening this Winter with Indoor Miniature Gardening with Houseplants

~ You don’t have to give up playing in your garden because it’s winter, you just have to adjust the size of your garden! I’m not talkin’ ’bout just plants either. This is a REAL garden!! And YES! You can grow one INSIDE!

Have you tried gardening in miniature yet?

See if any of this fits wherever you are:

• For new gardeners/plant-lovers, miniature gardening is a chance to learn how to grow a garden.
• For experienced gardeners/ plant-lovers, it’s an opportunity to add another type of gardening to your list.
• For experienced miniaturists, it’s a means to explore more ways to enjoy miniatures.
• For new miniature-lovers, it’s an excuse to work in many different mediums. (See the Gardening in Miniature Prop Shop Book for more.)
• For…

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Miniature Gardening 101: The Dirt

The Mini Garden Guru

For containers: start with organic potting soil with no added fertilizers or polymers (moisture-retaining stuff) – we haven’t had good feedback at all from using it for our miniature gardens. The above garden was for a display for the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in 2004 called ‘Myown State Park.’

~ One of the challenges over the last 20 years with bringing the miniature garden hobby out in the open, and finding ways to share it with the rest of the world, is that it attracts a wide variety of people.

And why wouldn’t it?

It comes in many forms and is, quite possibly, the most accessible way to garden for just about anyone. Old or young, rural or urban, spatially challenged or not, experienced growers or those brand new to gardening, are finding out that miniature gardening is not tied to any financial, geographic…

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Miniature Garden Beginnings: Still Crazy After All These Years

The Mini Garden Guru

In celebration of 10 years of miniature gardening, here is a visual trip back to the turn of the century.

Did I make mistakes? I made quite a few.

Did I get weird looks when people found out that I was doing this for a living? Yes.

Do I ask myself questions in the third person? Apparently, I do. ;o)

Click into the photos to enlarge them. All of the photos were taken on 35mm film and were scanned from prints. (Was it only 10 years ago that we didn’t have digital cameras, iphones or portable video cameras?)

The very first miniature garden was an impromptu board with soil on it that was created for the greeting card line. I used small weeds and rocks to fill up the space. Lake Union in the background in the above photo.

At about…

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Miniature Fairy Gardens at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show

The Mini Garden Guru

Find the plants and accessories mentioned here, or to visit our online store, the world’s only store solely dedicated to the art and craft of miniature gardening go here.

Subscribe to this blog, up on the right ~>

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Top Mini Garden Ideas for Last Minute Shopping

The Mini Garden Guru

Top Miniature Garden Ideas for Last Minute Shopping

These gift suggestions will be shipped by Priority Mail. Choose Parcel Post when checking out of our online store and we’ll upgrade the postage for you to get it under the tree in time for the Big Day! It’s our way of saying, “Thanks!”

The Mini Patio Mix Kit

Tired of watering your miniature or fairy garden and watching the pathway flow away with the stream of water? Are you always having to fuss and fix your miniature garden after Squirrel comes through, pretending he’s Godzilla and destroying your mini patio? You need the Mini Patio Mix Kit to lock in those stones and add an authenticity to your wee garden-scape that you can’t get anywhere else.

The Complete Miniature Garden Kit

Want to get into this new miniature garden hobby but don’t know how? Here’s a Miniature Garden Kit that is…

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Miniature Gardening 103: The Water

The Mini Garden Guru

A custom, double-sided Miniature Garden made for a favorite customer, 2005. This side was an Hawaiian theme, the other side was a Northwest theme.

~ Welcome back to our Miniature Garden Series of tutorials to get you started in this wonderful hobby! If you missed it, Miniature Gardening 101 was about soil, Miniature Gardening 102 is all about indoor vs. outdoor plants. Today we are discussing how to know how much water your miniature garden will need.

A Miniature Garden for dry, full-sun conditions. From left to right, Wooley Thyme, Blue Star Juniper and Sedum Cape Blanco – can be grown with success in the same container.

Huh? There are Different Types of Watering?

Water is a big factor to consider when choosing plants for your miniature garden, especially for a miniature garden in a container.  Different plants have different watering needs, so plants in…

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Miniature Garden Plants: Secrets to Success

The Mini Garden Guru

I love it when a great idea comes together…

When I stumbled on to this idea at the end of the last century, (I’ve been dying to use that) I spent the first couple of years killing plants. I thought I could trick plants into doing what I wanted them to do. I thought that just because the plant had small leaves, it would make a good miniature garden plant. But, alas, no.

It was through endless trial and error that I found out what plants “work” best for the miniature garden. Way back then, when I began my quest, there were no books, no websites, no links, not a thing that I could turn to for guidance, to find out what plants to use. So, it was all about buying it and trying it – for years. And I still do it to…

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Miniature Gardening with Sticks and Stones

The Mini Garden Guru

“The only limit is your imagination.” – Einstein

Here’s a wordless Wednesday blog on some of the authentic miniature garden accessories that we’ve unearthed here at Two Green Thumbs Miniature Garden Studio this season. We are tickled to introduce real miniature cedar trellises and real miniature engraved garden stones, both are made here in the US of A. And there is a special tribute to Mom and Dad at the end. Happy Wednesday!

Mom and Dad on Pedestal are special orders for now. Email me at Janit@TwoGreenThumbs.com

See the rest of the new items up in the store here. Clicking on the pictures should take you to the listing.

Join us for more.

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New Miniature Garden Plants & Accessories for the New Hobby

The Mini Garden Guru

Mini Garden News: New Plants, New Accessories for the New Hobby

Whew! There is nothing like a book deal to throw a wrench in your work week. I really hate when that happens! Lol!

Yeah, ya caught me – I didn’t have time to blog for weeks now and I do feel bad about it. Blog ideas have been piling up in my brain though so know that I have thought about you! We got a ton of stuff done, Steve and I, but to have a quiet moment to write a short blog? Whassatabout?

So, in an effort to make up for it, I have added some more brand-new-never-existed-before-ever miniature garden accessories, re-stocked a bunch of old favorite miniature and dwarf trees and shrubs in our store.

Pond-Up

Brand spankin’ new Two Green Thumbs Miniature Garden Ponds are modeled after the real thing. The ponds were designed by me…

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