Get Creative with a Craft Garden

Handcrafts are a beautiful way to express our love for creating, and sharing that love with others. But having to buy all the supplies can get expensive. One way to circumvent spending all that money is to supplement your love of handcrafts with things from nature. And that’s where a Craft gardens comes into play. 

Learn more about what to grow, how you can use items from nature in your handcraft projects, and even how to find things you don’t have the room to grow!

Transcript

This past Christmas I was searching for a fun gift for my granddaughter. She and I bonded over creating, so each of my gifts for her involves handcrafts in some way. Our first project together was weaving, so one year it made sense to get her a quality potholder loom. We graduated to crochet, and other projects, and most of what she needed for those I had already gotten for her over time. 

This year, I wanted to find something new to both of us. When I saw a flower press, I immediately saw how we could blend two crafts together – we could use pressed flowers to embellish paper weaving projects. So, I ordered her one. On Christmas Day, she and I pulled it all out and started pressing a bouquet of flowers from the grocery store. We both enjoyed doing it, and several weeks later she texted me a photo of her finished dried flowers. We were both hooked. 

Of course, we can purchase flowers to do the pressing, but I can see where both her allowance and my checkbook could deplete all too quickly doing it that way. So, I started researching what flowers I wanted to use for pressing, which ones will grow in my gardening zone, and how many I had room to grow. These flowers will be the start of my new Craft Garden.

A Craft Garden is simply a garden that provides you with things you can use to create other things with. We are all familiar with grapevine wreaths. If you grow grapes, you already have a small craft garden in progress. My friend Ayn began several years ago growing flowers and plants she could use for creating dyes for yarn and fabric.  But wreaths and fabric dye aren’t the only Craft Gardens you can have. 

Craft Gardens come in many different forms. If you have a place to put a small water garden, you can grow cat tails and use the leaves for rush weaving. Rush is used to weave chair bottoms and, in some cases, larger pieces to use as screens. You can also use rush to weave a foundation piece, then place dried flowers on it to create a piece for framing.

You can combine a Craft Garden with other types of gardens. Herbs and some flowers are perfect for making Potpourri, used in bath products, and the leaves and flowers can be used in candle making. If you are a baker or cook, edible flowers can be perfect additions to salads (nasturtiums are perfect for this) or used to decorate cakes. Let me add this, though. If you do use your flowers for eating, be sure they have not been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides. 

 And if you enjoy making baskets, you are almost limited only to your imagination. If you have pine trees, you can create pine needle baskets. But you can also use some stems and leaves to make baskets, such as the leaves of daffodils, iris, and tulips. Cat tail leaves (the rush weaving we talked about earlier) is also good for weaving baskets. 

You can even grow a garden to feed your passion for spinning. Cotton can be grown in a separate garden or tucked into a flower bed. Flax is used to weave linen, and you can also spin bamboo, soybean, as well as some other fibrous plants. 

But before you rush out to plant these things, you may want to remember that growing these plants is the easy part. Processing them for spinning is time consuming and not easy. And although cotton is much easier to process for spinning, the growing part may be an issue. 

Where I live, I am in a Boll Weevil Eradication area. I can’t even grow one single cotton plant in a flower bed without getting permission from the state’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry. 

This means I have to ask permission; then someone has to come out to inspect my proposed growing area and give me the go ahead to plant. From there, someone will have to have access to my garden to inspect my plants periodically and make sure I don’t have any signs of the dreaded boll weevil, which can quickly decimate cotton crops. If those pests do show up, then traps have to be set. 

With a nature-provided Craft Garden, don’t forget about plants in the grass family. Broom corn can be used to make brooms as well as straw baskets. Couch grass and Tussock grass can be turned into baskets as well. 

What it boils down to is, if it’s a fibrous plant, it can be used for weaving. And if you don’t want to make a basket, think about growing lavender. Not only do the flowers work well in potpourris and bath products, but you can also weave the stems and leaves into baskets and delicious smelling Lavender wands. 

And here’s a thought – you don’t actually have to plant a craft garden to work with nature. One has already been planted for you. All it takes is to find a place to get out in nature. Walnut husks are often used for dye and create a dark brown color. 

I’ve recently been seeing pinecones that have been spray painted different colors, then attached to a rod which has been covered in floral tape to make a fun bouquet to match any season or décor. And all it takes is a straight limb from a hardwood tree to make wooden buttons or needles. 

Larger branches can be used to make bird feeders. And if you are really brave, you can use them to make a large, weighted loom that hangs from trees. Making this type of loom isn’t difficult. But you need a step ladder to reach the top, a strong back to bend over to weave towards the bottom, and a tremendous amount of fiber for the warp and weft. Oh, yeah. I’m definitely scheming to do this – I just need to source my supplies.

Around here, spring brings Wisteria into full bloom. Our road is primarily wooded, with a home tucked into the trees every half mile or more. Along the edge of the road, this vining plant weaves its way high into the trees. Not only does it make for beautiful photographs, but you can also cut the vines to use for wreaths.  

Just keep in mind. There are some public places where you can find many of the plants you need for crafting purposes. And there may be seemingly abandoned land. But regardless – most land is owned by someone, so you need permission to harvest any flower, vine, leaves, or other items. Like pine straw, you may think it wouldn’t be a big deal to pick up a bag of it for your basket weaving, but the property is still private, and you need permission to be on it. 

If you love to create with your hands, you may all too often feel the financial pinch of buying all the supplies. But if you love to garden as well, you may be able to grow at least a few of the supplies you need. All it takes is a little forethought, a bit of digging, and some time to process what you’ve grown. And that in itself can turn out to be another creative outlet. Who knows? You might even find enough crafting supplies in nature to keep you wrapped up in handcrafting and gardening for a long time to come!

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