Winter Botanical Tabletop Garden

Hello Friends and Welcome to a very fun 

and a bit different Blog Hop

that my friend Amber from Follow the Yellow Brick Home

has put together in this very cold and dreary month of January.

Yes, you read it right, it's a Hop where we're sharing 

our "Winter" Botanical and Garden ideas.

Thanks so much Amber, for putting this all together

to share some fun ideas and inspiration for winter into spring.

Winter Botanicals? Is that a thing?

absolutely, friends.

Even though I'm not a big gardener officially,

I love container planting and I think and plan about what to do with flowers

and with my Potting Bench on the Back Porch throughout the seasons.

I thought for a quick minute about doing this display out on the back porch,

but the 37 degree weather spitting rain changed my mind pretty fast.

With our sunroom along the southeast back of this house, I have mostly good light except for 3 large trees that give us some shade. This year I managed to bring in a few containers from this summer and fall with ferns, an ivy, and a large pot of geraniums. I used to overwinter geraniums but I had a better spot in a John Deere Room with wonderful windows to the east at that previous house. 

So when Amber mentioned a Hop with winter flowers and plantings

 I immediately thought about doing a take on a winter potting bench display.

My farmhouse table in the Garden Room is used infrequently

and is a wonderful spot to put together a great tabletop tableau.

Each season and holiday finds something new there

 and usually with a botanical/garden theme.

Two small birds give a nod to Spring, 

and a bird print stuffed hanging heart

has me looking forward to Valentine's Day.

This gray washed reproduction seed tray is usually found 

in the living room on the coffee table,

but I borrowed it for this display to corral my plants and garden items.

I wanted to use different textures and container styles for the plants and garden elements. 

I'm using a large glass cloche, a chalk urn, and a grapevine twig basket contain an ivy,

a mini fern, and a grouping of faux paperwhites.

Since it is still winter I wanted to include a few faux evergreen

 cuttings and some pinecones.

Peat pots, some old garden tools, wooden boxes, a birdhouse, 

and vintage clay pots add to the theme of vintage garden goods.

We feed the birds here from one big feeder;

that is, if we can outsmart the squirrels.

Tons of cardinals, wrens, a few brave finches and sparrows,

mockingbirds, titmice and even a few blue jays and woodpeckers

come to visit.

Most of my garden vignettes feature a birdie or two.

The paperwhites aren't real because the kitties

love to chew on anything that's alive.

We've had a few encounters with poinsettias and geraniums

which cause a major tummy upset!

Visually, this little grouping needed some height.

So one of my old "French" watering cans gave

a galvanized garden metal addition on an antique footstool.

Speaking of kitties that eat plants...

that's one of them under the table.

The ferns in the background were doing pretty well

with their new fall haircut, but then pooped out on me.

I think they'll come back once it's spring and they're outside.

The console table also has a few pots filled with houseplants.

Take a look at this happy little fella

that isn't really a botanical or garden item,

but he sure is a cute little vintage toothpick holder.

My beat-up etagere which was outside our first summer here,

got a scrub down and now holds a few more houseplants.

That lovely white amaryllis is faux, but still so pretty.

The old multipaned window behind the shelving holds book pages

from a college botanical study from the 40's with real specimens.

If you're following the Hop (I hope you can) and you came from Marty's Blog, A Stroll Thru Life, I'm so glad you came by. When you leave here I hope you'll hop on over to Kim's blog Shiplap and Shells and check out what she's up to. Kim has a fabulous greenhouse so I'm sure she has some wonderful inspiration for winter plantings.

To follow the Hop just click on the individual image links 

or the list below to see what we have going on!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Yellow Brick Home

A Stroll Thru Life

Common Ground

Shiplap and Shells

Our Southern Home

Botanic Bleu

Decor to Adore

The Tattered Pew

The Painted Hinge

Bricks n Blooms

Thistle Key Lane

My Thrift Store Addiction

Let's Add Sprinkles