Every garden deserves a bit of whimsy.
I’ve been adding the gazing balls and plant pokes to the garden. A new addition was a plant poke I created out of a styrofoam ball, some push pins and a metal stake.
I’ve got all sorts of things in the craft closet from my days in education and my days as a Brownie/Guide leader. I’ve seen a similar ideas in a couple of places on the web and here is my version of it.
This project needs a styrofoam ball and some push pins of different colours and a support stake (either metal or wood).
Push the pins into the styrofoam ball. One thing I learned was if you take one out you shouldn’t use the same hole as it will be a loose fit for the pin.
I used an old piece of metal rod and pushed it into the bottom of the ball, Do this carefully so the ball doesn’t split. Then continue to add the push pins till it is all covered.
Add it to a pot of flowers once the plants grow and fill out more a lot of the metal stake will be covered.
You could use push pins all the same colour or you could even spray paint the whole thing if you don’t like the random colours. I’m going to leave it as it is right now and think about painting it later. I hate spending a lot of money of these whimsy creations right away as I like to see how it holds up over time.
If you have small children in your garden this will not be a good thing to have within their reach as the pins will come out easily and could case damage. Display with caution. You could glue the pins into the ball but I’ve found that glue guns are too hot and will eat into the styrofoam. You could always use another sort of glue like white glue (might take ages to dry) or Goop glue.
A few years ago I created a mini gazing ball out of an old rubber ball and some flat sided marbles/gems. Here is how I made it.
It needed a bit of repair this spring as a few of the marbles/gems had fallen off. While we were cleaning the garage I found the bottom of an old feeder that looked like a bullrush but the woodpeckers had ruined the metal mesh.
So the mini gazing ball got popped onto the metal stem and poked into the garden … an instant flower that can be moved around to various places in the garden.
Garden folklore says a gazing ball will ward off witches from your garden. During the 17th Century in England, gazing balls were used to protect plants from the wicked witches who would come to steal them. The gazing balls attracted witches, but once the witches saw their ugly reflections, they fled the garden and the plants were safe.
Have you seen the large gazing ball?
see more garden whimsy
