Creative Planters!
Simplicity is often best when creating container gardens, such as this eye-catching example on a rustic table behind the garage. Nestled inside a metal box, four dwarf boxwoods are surrounded by white-flowering moss that softens the manicured shapes of the boxwood.
A vintage washtub sporting orange paint becomes a planter behind the garage near a large patio. With a dwarf evergreen as the tall focal point, the planter is grounded by a ring of light green moss followed by blue lobelia and creeping thyme. Standard evergreens grow quickly, so choose dwarf varieties instead, Jona recommends.
Don’t toss a leaky old birdbath, Jona advises. Turn it into a pedestal planter instead. Here, miniature petunias, lobelia and red verbena planted in soil and encircled with medium-size rocks offer a joyful color spot.
In a protected area outside Jona’s shop, favorite barn-sale finds are refashioned into unique planters. A small red wheelbarrow backdrops a vintage toolbox turned planter, replete with various colors of verbena and lobelia. A blue sports field chalk liner waving an American flag is planted with geraniums.
Jona and Scott built the retaining wall to delineate between the hillside plantings and the grass below. They purchased a kit to build a fireplace insert and found a variety of vintage bricks on Craigslist salvaged from an old building. The couple planned to build the fireplace themselves until a new customer brought along her husband, Mike Myer, who turned out to be a talented mason. Jona became his assistant for three days, learning how to mix concrete and lay bricks herself.
Left: Jona’s painting of a scarecrow, cornstalks, a goat and a piglet on one of the barns was inspired by a book her nowgrown children used to love, Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown.
Middle: Male donkey Joey pokes his adorable head through the fence to greet guests passing by. His braying is always a hit with barn-sale shoppers, especially if they have children in tow.
Below: Jona transformed a rickety old barn housing the female donkeys with her fanciful faux painting. She used the same red paint found throughout the property as a base over the patched plywood. To create the trio of painted garden tools, she leaned the real implements against the exterior and painted replicas of them. She did the same with a single arched window, making it a triplicate. A plethora of handpainted flowers provides a window-box effect. To camouflage damaged wood along the bottom of the barn, the Thomsons planted a hedge and installed a sweet picket fence.