The Chinoiserie Topiary

Carolyne Roehm

 

Topiaries in blue and white Chinese porcelain are so classic for your home and garden. I love faux versions for indoors. A lovely touch for a dining table, sideboard, fireplace, kitchen island, or the corner of a room - one will brighten any spot.

My Garden at CCC

CCC

 

My garden's Spring cleaning is done! My gardeners (a team of 8) arrived at 7:30 am yesterday and did a wonderful cleanup of all the beds and installed 120 bags of my favorite black mulch. This is the front of CCC and you can see on the left two of my vintage blue and white Chinese garden stools - they have been in my gardens for over 40 years including lots of snowstorms up North and hurricanes here in Florida. 

Boxwood for Christmas Decorating

Boxwood Present with Ribbon

 

I love boxwood topiaries and my garden has many topiaries. I am too far south for boxwood, but Eugenia topiaries do great in South Florida and look almost identical. For Christmas, I decorate the topiaries in blue and white Chinese fishbowls at my entrance with white lights.

More Christmas @ CCC

CCC

My love of topiary is reflected at my front entrance for this year's Christmas decorating. There is a topiary dog, a Christmas gift, and even a turtle. In the foyer is a topiary reindeer.

Setting the Chinoiserie Christmas Table

Caspari

Here is wonderful inspiration for setting your holiday table with Chinoiserie Chic style. In the first two, blue and white Chinese porcelain mixes seamlessly with traditional red and green. BTW, places like Home Depot and Lowe's are great to find rosemary and ivy live tabletop topiaries. My Publix all have beautiful little rosemary topiaries. HomeGoods are good sources for faux and preserved versions.

New HomeGoods Find

CCC

 

I was in HomeGoods and one of the stockers was putting this out. I swooped it up instantly, my new faux boxwood topiary dog. I have it in my breakfast room at the moment styled with a dog bowl. Beatrice keeps checking the dog bowl to see if she is missing out on anything....

The Blue and White Pagoda @ Christmas

Grace Frederick Design

 

I have this blue and white pagoda and love it. It is such a classic for the lover of chinoiserie. It looks wonderful here on a mantel combined with Christmas greenery and a poinsettia. 

Red Bows & HomeGoods

CCC

I love boxwood and found this darling faux boxwood Christmas gift box at HomeGoods yesterday. Topiaries are favorites of mine and I have put many in my garden. Since English boxwood is not south Florida friendly, I have substituted Eugenia which is so easy to grow here. They are all decorated with white lights for the holidays. I will try to remember to take some photos.

Topiary

Versailles

 So, I have gone a bit topiary mad here in Florida, but seeing this photo of the orangery at Versailles, I don't feel so bad. I just adore the juxtaposition of the formality of topiary in urns and in blue and white Chinese porcelain with the tropical abandon of palms, banana trees, monstera and the like.

I spent yesterday in the garden pruning my topiaries with a new toy - a wonderful pair of Spear & Jackson topiary shears. These one handed shears make very fast and easy work of trimming your topiaries. They have won all sorts of British awards and can be found on Amazon.

Although English boxwood does not really love south Florida, Eugenia does and is a wonderful substitute. 

Carolyn Roehm

Spear & Jakson topiary shears

Styling, Orchids & Alligators

CCC Foyer

CCC Foyer

CCC Foyer

I did a little styling in my foyer yesterday. So fun!

I mentioned I am interested in growing orchids on my trees in my Venice garden. I saw this done for the first time in Jamaica while on my honeymoon cruise and tucked it away in my brain. There is an excellent piece from The American Orchid Society with all the details, but you basically unpot the orchid removing the soil and attach it to your tree using pantyhose or long strand sphagnum moss or raffia twine or black cloth (something soft in other words) and keep the roots moist while it's getting established. My palm trees and oak trees are both perfect choices.

Orchid on palm tree

As for the alligator succulent topiary - I have ordered the form and plan to stuff it myself with sphagnum moss and plant it with succulents - I am thinking either Echeveria

 or Graptoveria.

You just make openings in the sphagnum moss with a pencil or screwdriver and stick in the succulent stems without soil and secure with a hairpin, florist pin, or more moss. There are tons of You Tube videos on topiaries showing it in more detail. The succulents grow and expand quickly so you obviously don't cover it but leave several inches of space between each. I read that you can just cut off the succulent stem and insert it, saving the pot, and a new succulent will grow in the pot. This obviously is much more cost effective. OK gardener friends, is that coleus inside his mouth?

I will post photos when I work on these projects.

Another gorgeous day here of course. Everyone told me it would take me a summer to adjust to the summer heat here and I found I needed zero adjusting. I think the summer heat and humidity here is very much like the D.C. summers. And no more coats and boots in my future. Glorious!

Can You Have Too Much Blue and White Porcelain?

Mark D. Sikes

My HomeGoods seems to be getting in more and more blue and white Chinese porcelain. Every time I see a nice piece I think to myself, can I really use another? And it makes me so happy to see rooms like this one and think, "Sure!" Luckily, it seems that all blue and white Chinese porcelain works well together. I think the only exception is perhaps those with background colors that are more celadon or gray that seem off combined with very white backgrounds. At any rate, this is a lovely space with blue and white, rattan, wicker, orchids, stripes, and Greek key - all favorites of mine. And a dozen pieces of blue and white Chinese porcelain.

I put in a bed of Foxtail Ferns yesterday. What a difference planting in this loamy sand as opposed to heavy clay in NOVA. The planting holes here dig themselves.

Foxtail Fern - Asparagus Meyeri

I was also looking at succulents for my topiary alligator. Luckily, succulents are very prevalent down here and very inexpensive as well. I especially like the way this topiary was done. I told you there is a limit on decorative objects in your garden here. This will drive them nuts - is this plant material or a decorative object? I would argue it's a plant.

Weekend Projects

Dombeya wallichii

I  was visiting the Edison and Ford Winter Estates a few months ago and saw the most incredible sight - nicknamed the tropical hydrangea, Dombeya wallichii is a stunning shrub/tree that smells like cupcakes. Now that I have my own garden and no crazies in it, I decided to see if I could track it down. Real hydrangeas are not happy in South Florida, and this is a wonderful alternative. I did locate it close by in St. Pete and am having it shipped.

As you might have surmised by my post on Saturday on Duranta, I tend to be a bit of a plant collector and love tracking down the exotic as well as heirloom plants.

A close up of "Tropical Hydrangea"

For any of you gardener friends, I now have the perfect location to start growing Brugmansia (Angel Trumpet), something I have wanted to do for ages. I would love a white, a pink, and an apricot/peach. Any cultivar suggestions?

For those of you who do not know this plant, here are a few pics.

I am aware of the genus' toxicity, these will be in the side yard away from the puppies.

I am enjoying gardening here beyond words. I love learning new things, and gardening here is like I moved to Mars. Or perhaps Venus since men are from Mars and women are from Venus. LOL

Most of the plants I knew and loved in NOVA do not grow here since the zones are very different. I knew little of tropicals and that's what loves it down here.

And the Master Gardener program which is connected with the University of Florida seems really first rate. It is on hiatus now with the pandemic, but I hope to get involved down the road. Interesting story - a supervisor from my lawn and shrub care was out this past week and "alerted" me to a "very serious" issue in the garden. I was polite but didn't believe a word. I called Extension and a lovely MG called me back and we had a delightful conversation and she agreed with my analysis. I sent photos and a second MG reviewed them and agreed the guy was completely wrong. Once again, Girl Power!!!!

More work planned in the garden this morning - I am getting it ready for an exciting transformation starting this week that I will share.

On another gardening topic, I mentioned my love of topiary - I came across this and think a succulent alligator would be a hoot. You are not going to believe this, but you can glue gun succulents to the moss and it does not hurt the succulent and they take root and grow. Wild! I think a large one in the garden would be fun. I have tracked down frames already.

I think this sounds fun. Anybody want to come over and glue gun succulents? (I am sure if I do this project I will use the tried and true method of making a hole in the moss and securing the plant and soil especially to get them to survive and spread long term).

Chinoiserie Outdoors

Les Ensembliers

I posted about this Palm Beach home back in February and interestingly, my new home reminds me of it a bit. Both are one level, stucco, palm trees in front, oversized coach lanterns, more formal Palm Beach than Tuscan.

My Home

You may recall that we chatted about the two pairs of ginger jars in front of the Palm Beach home and decided it was risky in terms of the ginger jars being stolen or toppling over.

I have an idea I love for adding more blue and white Chinese porcelain to the front of my home. I already have added a pair of vintage blue and white Chinese garden stools that have been outdoors in my garden for over thirty years!

Here they are with my gorgeous reclaimed lobster rope door mat from 30 Fathom that I adore if it is possible to adore a door mat. I do!

My new idea is that outside the covered area I will use my pair of blue and white Chinese porcelain fishbowls with a pair of topiaries - either lemon or lime trees or Eugenia. I rescued the fishbowls from Sandbagger where they were in the lanai with a pair of palms. Using palms here would be silly because I already have massive royal palms in the front yard and they would get lost in the shuffle.

Here are lemon topiaries in fishbowls via Mary McDonald.

Mary McDonald

BTW, Venice is very low crime, my gated community is very safe, and I feel that they would be fine outside here. I might buzz over to Home Depot and see what they have. Any experience growing lemon or lime trees? I think it would be very chic and very Old Florida.

BTW, I had five guys working on my garden yesterday and it looks wonderful. My gardener is extremely knowledgeable about Florida plants and things went absolutely great. Now I can start having fun in the garden since all the "heavy lifting" is done.

When Life Gives You Lemons

Aldous Bertram - House Beautiful

I would love to grow topiary lemon trees and they are readily available here even at Lowe's and Home Depot. Check out this chic vignette with a lemon topiary in a beautiful blue and white cachepot and Quadrille Paradise Garden curtains and cushion. I love the wicker stool. And yes, I do use shoes for staging as well.

My Living Room

Mary McDonald - House Beautiful

Wisteria

In the vignette above, check out how they have used seashells in lieu of moss - adorable! Definitely using this idea. I doubt all those Meyer lemons came off of that little tree though!

I suspect the topiaries would fare much better in the lanai than the house, but they do look great.

Michelle Nussbaumer - Veranda

The Chinoiserie Entrance

Carolyne Roehm's Charleston Home

It is interesting to me that over more than a decade of Chinoiserie Chic, I have found very few homes to post about with Chinoiserie at the front entrance. Carolyne Roehm's Charleston home is a lovely example with several pairs of topiaries in blue and white Chinese porcelain. Since English boxwood does not like South Florida, Eugenia is used here instead and is easily found in all of these topiary shapes. Lowe's and Home Depot sell them in abundance. Also note the pair of smaller containers with English ivy. I have really been enjoying working in the garden here. It's lovely to be able to garden all year long. Gardening in sand is also much different than the heavy clay soil I am so used to. It is so much easier to plant things, but on the negative side the lack of nutrients in the sand make diligent fertilizing necessity. And this time of year armadillos are having their babies and like digging up the yard. Such unusual looking animals! And the other day there was a pair of baby sandhill cranes in the yard.

Blue and White Outdoors

Michelle Nussbaumer - Veranda

This is a stunning example of bringing blue and white outdoors. I have posted before about how much fun I am having decorating the lanai. This space above has so much inspiration. I already have a huge collection of blue and white Chinese porcelain in the lanai including half a dozen Chinese garden stools. I love outdoor wicker and yesterday I ordered a pair of outdoor wicker chaise lounges. Already on my list are lemon and lime trees. I did not mention that there is a huge balcony on the second floor, and after I finish with the lanai, that will be next to focus on.

The Chinoiserie Mud Room

Caitlin Wilson Design

A beautiful mud room painted in Benjamin Moore New Hope Gray with a pair of blue and white Chinese porcelain boxwood topiaries.

Blue and Green Table Setting

The Pink Pagoda

A stunning blue and green table setting features blue and white Chinese ginger jars, blue and white Chinese porcelain with topiaries, and pagoda salt and pepper shakers. Great inspiration for a Chinoiserie Thanksgiving.

Saturday Inspiration

Miles Redd

A gorgeous space combining my favorite things - Chinoiserie wallpaper, blue and white Chinese porcelain, stripes, green, silk taffeta curtains, topiary, and a floral fabric. Note the green shade on the blue and white Chinese lamp.

Chinoiserie at HomeGoods

The black and white Chinoiserie pagoda topiaries at $19.99 each are this week's HomeGoods find. The gold Chinese statue at $19.99 I found on a previous HomeGoods trip. Pretty fabulous right? Click the photos to enlarge. Happy weekend!