Plant Craft: 30 Projects that Add Natural Style to Your Home - Hardcover

Caitlin Atkinson is a photographer of places, spaces, and all things botanical. She was the photographer for the books Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden, Dry Gardens: High Style for Low Water Gardens and Designing with Palms, among others. Her photographs have appeared in ElleDecor, Dwell, Martha Stewart Living, and ArchitecturalDigest. When not photographing gardens, you can find her digging in her own patch of dirt. See more of her work on Instagram @caitlinatkinson_photography or at http://www.caitlinatkinson.com.

Turn Your Decor Outside In
Discover your own natural style, with 30 step-by-step projects inspired by the authenticity of the world around us. In Plant Craft, interior stylist Caitlin Atkinson helps match your tastes with nature’s handiwork. Design a chandelier of trailing succulents, create an underwater driftwood garden, delight visitors with whimsical tillandsia nests, or grow a living wall of plants. Most projects can be completed within an hour or two. Want to infuse your home with the appeal and beauty of the natural world? Plant Craft shows you how.
 

Introduction
As any gardener can tell you, working with plants and other natural materials forces you to accept the independent nature of the subject matter. An indoor garden can inspire a sense of wonder and anticipation, but also disappointment, and the unpredictability of working with natural materials can be a source of awe and frustration. An artist or crafter working with living things is forced to accept the impermanence of her creation and life itself—it is always a learning experience, and while mistakes can be made, fun can be had. 

The projects in this book range from tabletop gardens to hanging sculptures to vertical wall gardens. A few are versatile and can be displayed by securing them to a wall or perching them on a bookshelf to lean against a wall. They vary in difficulty—a few, like the Water Sculpture Garden, merely call for assembling the materials to create the project while others, like the Bench Planter, require basic drilling know-how and comfort using a saw. Most can be made in an hour or two. Given the right care, they all have the potential to grace your home for a long time. Some projects, such as the Miniature Flagstone Planter and the Saikei Tray Garden, are miniature living landscapes, which give you a chance to go beyond caring for a houseplant and fully engage your creative spirit as you select and arrange the materials and then tend to the plants.

There is no need to stop with the projects in these pages—use this book as a starting point. Seek inspiration for ideas in your daily life: from an art exhibit, a walk through a park, or a great book. Look to what is available in your local environment as well from afar when you’re thinking about a new project. Exploring your surroundings closely is a way to develop a deeper connection to the place where you live. The need to connect with something beyond ourselves is necessary, the need to create elemental. There is no better way to harness the desire to create, connect, and enjoy nature than an indoor garden project. Go get dirty.