FAKE IS FINE....SOMETIMES

 I have had a few fake flowers and plants in my time but these days I am very selective in my choices. Gone are the days when I had the fake ficus in that dark corner. And gone is the lovely azalea basket. A friend once told me he was surprised at me for having such a thing. Me a gardener. 

They have some very fine metal agave in our neighborhood and the club house has a beautiful art sculpture which looks real from a distance and even up close. I actually had to touch one to be sure. They actually fit well into the landscape and the agave create a uniformity in a series of of planters in the center of the road as we enter the neighborhood. 

 

I had been toying with the idea of putting some such metalwork in a very difficult place in the garden. We inherited a tall planter to the left of the front door. Open to the sky the space is narrow and receives sun only in the late afternoon. The previous owners had never done anything with it and it had become a depository for discarded water bottles. Wouldn't it be so much easier to put a metal agave in there-if I could just find one. Last week while visiting a nursery and having nixed a number of pieces David beckoned me over to see the perfect one.

 It was a saguaro. What could be more perfect and I did not have to balk at the price. A good sized plant and soil would likely cost more. I'm not sure whether  should treat it but for now we went ahead and 'planted' it.

 

We had to rack our brains as to what we were going to fill the pot with as well as how best to secure it. In the past I have filled pots with plastic and bags of mulch. They didn't seem stable enough. It was our son who came up with the idea of using masonry blocks. We headed to the local store and purchased 2 blocks and a tile to make a platform. We robbed our dry creeks for the rock to secure and cover the base.

The added bonus is that we now have something to look at through the window just inside the house.