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My husband seems to be really keen on creating a romantic oasis in the courtyard. He wants plants, lushness, flowers, abundance…
Well, it wasn’t hard to talk me into that, of course, and last weekend I assembled all the pots we have and put them in the courtyard to see what we have to work with. We do have just over 30 pots (plus the brick planter I made on Saturday), but it’s clearly far from enough.
Still, it will do for a start; it’s not enough to crowd the space as it should do to make it feel like a truly intimate space for two (and maybe a few more on occasions). It will be a place for lazy breakfasts and tête-à-tête lunches, and maybe the odd afternoon drink. Or perhaps maybe two.
The furniture will be very limited; just a round table and two iron chairs (more on those below) and the stone-topped trolley-table that doubles as additional kitchen work space on nice days and as a gardening work table. (And yes, it is cleaned properly between the latter and the former…)
The furniture: One ugly white round table (legs of metal tubing with a plastic-topped wood-composite top) and two so-so black metal arm chairs with a tiny bit of grape leaves ornamenting the edge of the chair backs. I’ve sanded down the chairs but haven’t painted them yet. The table got the full blasting-down on Sunday, first with a chisel to remove the loose bits of plastic around the edges and then I attacked the entire table with a steel brush (on a drilling machine) for absolute ages before washing it down, letting it drip off and putting it in the sitting room so it will be completely dry and ready to paint.
The table and chairs will turn a glossy dark – VERY dark – green.And yes, it IS inspired by classic racing green sports cars, but it also seems to me like a colour that will suit the red buildings and supplement the colours of the foliage in a darker tone. I really hope I will be able to give it all a nice finish; it doesn’t have to be perfect, of course, but I want it to feel lovely and look beautiful.
>Get you some acrylic paint and age your containers in the colors that you like. Get some moss and glue from the store and decorate some of the other containters and you will be off to a great start no matter how few containers you have…fun stuff, this planning!!
>Darla: I might be too purist to paint the pots, and either way I won't need to; we have some lovely terracotta pots and a few of them are glazed but in colours we really like, so it's all about filling them with plants and getting more of them.I might try my hand at building some wooden planters, though, and that would be a chance to get as creative as my – limited – craft skills allow.
>Oh, but the painting is way easier than you realize. Paint one color on and then dab on the second color, sand here and there, viola, aged looking containers.
>Hello Soren,we gardeners do like everything looking just right even when its for our eyes only. Pretty sure whatever you choose to do will look just great. Thanks for the recent visit to my site. Very glad to have saved your comment which ended up in the spam box for some obscure reason.
>Daria: Most of our containers already look rather aged… I suspect most of them are at least ten years old or more, and obviously terracotta pots age beautifully.Alistair: Getting the table and chairs in shape will be a breeze now that I have prepped them and just have to slap on the paint.