DIY Live Ivy Topiary

I’ve been playing in the dirt again, exploring other ways to bring the outdoors indoors by decorating with plants. There are several other posts in this impromptu series: DIY Succulent Wreath HERE and for those places in your home that don’t get enough sunshine for a live plant I showed you my Faux Succulent Terrarium HERE-  and I did an easy DIY Live Terrarium HERE.

Before I show you what I came up with this week, let me show you some plant inspiration I found at Pottery Barn

Look at this little Ivy beauty…

The ivy and the bird cage are so beautifully different…

I’m kinda smitten with English Ivy, these plants have a bit of fairy tale romance built right in with all those unruly but graceful trailing vines.

So, I decided a topiary of English Ivy would be fun to try! I’m fighting the urge to break into fairy-tale mode: Once upon a time there lived a lonely plant named Little-Ivy.  Little-Ivy wanted a forever home more than anything…

Anyhoo, I searched everywhere for small topiary forms but couldn’t find any. Hobby Lobby has gorgeous larger topiary forms that I may try outside in the spring, but nowhere could I come up with one small enough to fit my little Ivy plant.  As always though, google rescued me…  Life on a Balcony had a great tutorial for making this topiary form…

Although it wasn’t the shape I had in mind, and I wanted to cover my form in moss, I did take her advice and picked up some 14 guage electrical wire.

For this little project you’ll need:

English Ivy Moss Topiary

*14 Guage Solid Electrical Wire

*Ivy with the longest trailing vines you can find.

*heavy container with a hole in the bottom for drainage

*Sphagnum moss

*Floral wire

*Potting Soil

*Pebbles (to help drainage)

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a nice ivy plant for weeks, I found this one at none other that Publix Supermarket for under eleven dollars!

Plant the Ivy in your container by adding pebbles in the bottom, then adding potting soil and adding your Ivy followed by a little more potting soil. If you haven’t repotted plants, take a minute to google and double check your method.

Cut 6 strips of wire longer than you want them.  Push them deep into the soil around the edges of your container. Twist them together at the top – you can add a rubber band to the twisted wire to hold them in place. This looks like a mess, but hang on, it really does work! The moss tones up the flimsy wire helping the form hold it’s shape.

Wet your moss and grab a glob (what a yucky word). Squeeze most of the water out and form a roll in your palm. Wrap the roll of moss around the wire squeezing to cover all sides of the wire. This part feels clumsy but after a little bit you’ll catch on…cut a piece of  floral wire and secure one end around the electrical wire near your moss – then tightly wrap the wire around the moss (around and around) to keep it in place…

Squeeze the moss as you wrap it with the wire…I had several false starts with this process but you really will catch on – keep trying!

At first I thought that this was going to take forever, but I got pretty fast! When you’re done with all 6 wires, trim them to the desired height and twist and rubber band the wires together. Carefully take the trailing vines,  divide them up and wrap one or two around each moss covered topiary form…if you don’t have enough trailing vines, be patient, if your ivy is happy, she’ll grow!

You may need to add a bit more moss at the top of the topiary form to finish it neatly.  I added a drawer knob at the tip-top for decoration by simply pushing the long screw of the knob into the middle of the twisted wires.

Ollie-the-pup approves of our new addition.

Now back to the fairy tale…

Little-Ivy found her forever home in the Land of Books on Stone House Lane…

And she lived happily ever after… 

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Have a happily-ever-after kind of day my friends

xo

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