The GARDEN of VILLA LEONE

As I promised for JUNE,  (yet here it is JULY) I'm posting the photos of the side patio garden of  VILLA LEONE

Most of these photos were taken in the summer 2019 but some of them I snapped in the spring of the same year, while the garden was still in transition.   As usual with me, I ended up changing things  too many times to count, and taking tons of photos of every new alteration, which made   sorting through all of them a labour intensive job. Using the new Blogger format has been a wee bit challenging for me, and  I actually had to go back to the old format, to install the photos then switch to the new format to write the text. EI YAAAH!!! even so-   THE GARDEN

Beginning with the exterior house wall:   I placed Jodi's gift of a little bird house, high on the wall  and perched a chickadee on the roof, who's   cautiously checking out the family cat sunning himself on the stone bench below! https://my-miniaturemadness.blogspot.com/ The birdhouse is next to the side door leading into the cool service entry of this ancient Venetian Villa. The arched kitchen window is covered by iron grill  a laser cut gate kit purchased from  Alpha Stamps.  Between the window and the door are a pair of mens clogs (French feves)  and a garden bench where the well fed cat lies resting next to a small pot of  burgundy hydrangeas another lovely gift from Jodi.

There are a set of narrow tiled steps which lead up from the canal at the side of the house,  and into a small walled patio area.

Cat by Sarah Hendry One of the main features in my garden is THE CLIMBING ROSE Initially I made it to drape over the patio wall but later I moved it to clamber over the kitchen window. For the climbing rose  I combined 2 kits from THE MINIATURE GARDEN  These kits were easy to assemble  however,  since I wanted a BIGGER than normal climber and didn't want to take the chance of running out of the leaves which came in the package, I decided to save them for later,  then I punched out some new ones. Using the wires in the kit for the armature and the plentitude of red rose petals, I made the flowers according to the kit's instructions.    I chose to use the Fabri Tac glue to secure the leaves to the frame which allowed the entire process to move along quickly.  the kits red rose petals  and below are the loose leaves which I saved for later  The armature for the climbing rose which I painted over with a mix of glue and water  I used a PUNCH BUNCH punch to make all the replacement leaves for the climber, shaping them with a ball tool before they were glued to the armature. Early stages! I wish I could remember exactly how long it took to fill out this shrub but I'm guessing 3-4 days at least.  I shaped the leaves and the stems further with the round nosed pliers  once the climber was completed,  then I gave the frame and the leaves,  a light coat of transparent glass paint to give it some shine.  The red roses add a nice burst of hot colour against the crumbling, sunbaked walls. THE HYDRANGEAS I have hydrangea plants throughout my Real Life Garden and I wanted some for my mini Venetian garden retreat as well.  I already had some BONNIE LAVISH plant kits in my stash, which I decided to assemble for this garden,  and I loved them SO MUCH  I had to order MORE! I have to say that the older Bonnie Lavish kits which I made the blue hydrangeas from,  provided more plant materials in the packages than the ones I ordered later;  even so, you still get your money's worth. For the burgundy hydrangea under the small tree in the planter,  I ended up combining a couple of hydrangea kits to get the fullness I wanted and a different technique to colour the petals but I'll tell you now,  how I made the blue ones pictured below.

here's what I did....

The kits come with several sheets of easy to remove flower petals.  The petals shown above are from the blue hydrangea kits.   Rather than paint them, I gave them an "eye" using a watercolor pencil  then I lightly scribbled over the paper with a chartreuse wax crayon, and then a cerulean blue wax crayon onto both sides of the sheet.

Then I punched out the petals and laid them onto an eraser.  I used a ball tool to cup them and the friction of the metal against the wax softened the wax as it cupped the paper and blended the colours together.                                                                                                                                  I was able to vary the intensity of the petals by scribbling more or less colour onto the paper sheets. I also used wax crayons on the leaves as well.     And above are the final results!   With another Bonnie Lavish Hydrangea kit, I used both crayons and inks which produced deeper petal colours. I still have a few more BONNIE LAVISH kits in my stash, so eventually I 'll be making more of these hydrangeas for the seaside garden @ LAND'S END.  Meanwhile, I've purchased a number of appropriate paper punches to enable me to produce some of my own hydrangea shrubs very similar in style to these kits, so LOTS OF FUN still to come!     Constructing the hydrangeas for VILLA LEONE were mini plant projects which I totally enjoyed!  TREES There are 3 trees planted in this Italian garden: 2 of them are Cypress trees; one planted outside the kitchen window and the other inside the long planter. I THINK I found them in the home decor aisle at WINNERS ( aka T.J. MAXX) I removed their original bases and sprayed the foliage with Elmer's adhesive and then doused them with a variety of superfine railroad scatter material. The smaller tree which you'll see a little further down, is a full-sized plastic house plant which I remove from its pot, bound the stems together at its base and then planted the trunks as a deciduous tree in the opposite corner of the planter garden.  sidenote: To this very day,  I am still moving the trees in and out of the planter  because I'm still not entirely satisfied with it- ah me.....

The plants growing between the tiles are MY versions of a creeping campanula.

Jodi's gift of Stargazer lilies are in this photo but I later moved them up onto the  front balcony of the Villa so their fragrance could permeate the bedroom!  THE GREEN STUFF GROWING ON THE VILLA WALLS I have a reference book entitled  Venetian Gardens  which feature many private gardens   cloaked with green vines clinging to ancient walls.  I wanted that look for the Villa so I tried out a few different methods to try and achieve it.  At first, I used lengths of glue saturated twine for the framework of the vines, it was okay but very difficult to control. But what worked the BEST for me,  was COIR coconut fiber liners intended for potted plants.  I found mine in the garden section of a $1.00 store.    I pulled the fibers apart and glued them to the exterior wall using Fabri-Tac adhesive. The base for the foliage was a green rayon hat from the thrift store which I cut into long sections to grow up the wall towards the 2 bedroom balconies. I sprayed the rayon material with Elmer's spray adhesive and then coated them with coarse railroad model scatter materials to bulk them out.  Then I glued the greenery directly onto the walls with Fabri Tac and threaded more Coir "branches" throughout the foliage, followed by an additional light spray of STIFFY fabric stiffener to keep all the loose scatter in place.  Using a leftover piece of printed fabric, I made a crude awning for over the side door and allowed the vines to crawl over it too! I'm pretty happy with the final look of both the vines and the green stuff!    THE LOW PATIO WALLS I made a low concrete wall which encompases my patio garden on 3 sides using pink insulation foam as its base and layers of carved wood trims from HOME DEPOT for the carved stone. I coated both the wood trims and the pink foam with a base paint and then several layers  of drywall plaster.  The photo below shows the inside of the garden wall and part of the wall return,  still in the garden's early stages.  The concrete garden wall behind the table,  connects to the front of the Villa.   I've covered it with green vines to visually soften the surface of it and provide some colour behind the table.  The greenery for the half walls was purchased from ALPHA STAMPS  it's a fibrous material with a variegated green scatter glued to the surface which you thin by gently pulling the fibers apart. (There's a photo of the product shown further down which shows the greenery  as it's sold straight out of the package.)    The scatter is not totally secure on the mat,  so it required a good spray of "STIFFY" as well.  The Patio Table and chairs was purchased from VICTORIA MINILAND  however I removed the small marble top and exchanged it for a bigger tabletop fashioned from a large round fridge magnet which I  draped with a crocheted doily I had in my stash. The pink geraniums you see directly below were from my previous tutorial.  https://studioeminiatures.blogspot.com/2019/02/ivy-leaf-geraniums-tutorial.html The terracotta urn that they're in  is the lower half of a dollar store air freshener the kind with the plastic lamp shade on top and a quick word about the tiles:  I used scrapbook paper for the original patio but when I enlarged it to what it is now, I had to cut around the tiles themselves to overlap the new with the old.  To conceal the edges of the paper, I added bits of moss over the grout lines to help disguise the seams.

The chair seats I made and covered in a hot pink  silk tie lining.  I set the table with Limoncello and  a dish of fresh figs, a book and fresh lemons.

The figs are plastic buds from a fake flower  which I re-painted then glued onto a rustic flat ceramic button

The limoncello came from Michaels craft store, and the plate of lemons from Victoria Miniland.

THE GARDEN PLANTER Because this entire garden was constructed for eating outdoors,  my original intention was to fill the planter with a herb garden.  But as the garden continued to develop, I scrapped that idea and went for more colour.  I had lots of flower kits in my stash  along with a few ready made plants which needed a home, so I fussed around with it until I came up with a scheme which was colourful and easy for the homeowners to maintain.  A small burgundy Hydrangea was planted in the corner to compliment the one Jodi sent me,  and next to the hydrangea  is the small deciduous tree, I mentioned earlier.

In front of the tree and under the iris are pansies, which I was constructing for the first time and they turned out meh. They too were from a kit but I'd used too much colour on the paper and the details got lost.   The group of iris were also first time tries and turned out better but not great;  more practice is definitely required.    FYI I've tried making more pansies after I'd made these using   DRORA'S TERRIFIC PANSY TUTORIAL as a guide https://drorasminimundo.blogspot.com/2017/03/pansies-tutorial.html and after many flowers,  I think I'm improving! But these first efforts   work fine as underplanting infill.   Included in the mix,  are magenta ornamental Allium along with chives;  and another blue mophead hydrangea made from kits by Lin Morrison a local vendor.  Lin's kits were easy to assemble and  her petals are precut and pre-coloured as well.

The bronze statuette in the garden was removed from a second hand candy dish I'd bought at the thrift store.  and below is   the foliage of the plastic deciduous tree

THE GREENERY AROUND THE GARDEN WALL

Here's the greenery I purchased from  ALPHA STAMPS  straight out of the package. I LOVE its variegated greens but as soon as you begin to pull it apart some of the scatter will come off so I made sure to use a sheet of paper under it to catch the fallout for reuse later.  The photo above shows the mat  before it's been teased out and to the right is the same product after it has been stretched out and glued to the wall.

a view from the outside of the garden wall  looking in

The PERFECT  'VL' Villa Leone emblem was another great gift from Jodi  along with  the 2 opposing lion reliefs on either side of the wall plaque. Another 'lion gift' from Jodi (shown below), was positioned on the return wall along the waterside steps up from the canal. It was originally gold but because it fit so well on the end of the wall,  I painted and plastered it to make it appear carved into the stone.

Below is the full frontal view of the stone planter

The carving on the face of the planter  is air dry clay casting. The hostas were a very early planting tryout   one among many others which followed ...

I made the pot of lavender and the pot of orange nasturtiums with the blue lobelia    EXTERIOR LIGHTING I installed two coach lamps on either corner of the lion wall. Actually, I had forgotten that I had these fixtures until the entire structure was built and the planter was filled. The only way I could properly install and hide the wiring, was to remove all the plants from the planter  and run the wires for the lamps down from the inside, then drill a hole through to the underside of the patio, then run the length of wire  through a channel carved out of the foam insulation to connect them to the power source attached to the house.   It was annoying having to retrofit them after the fact, but in the end, it was worth all the extra time it took. THE GARDEN AT NIGHT

Sadly,  this blurred photo is the only aerial view I have  of the entire garden with the lights on.

The garden lights as seen from the canal

AND WITH  THE LIGHTS ON IN THE KITCHEN

Having posted all these garden photos, I am seriously considering making a few more alterations, especially now that I've had time to analyze and rethink some of the choices I've made and how to improve them. 

I'm also on the lookout for a patio umbrella for over the table in the eating area. Meanwhile, I have been busy outside cultivating the plants in my REAL LIFE garden moving them around just like I do in my mini ones!  which explains my recent absence from the blogs; just in case you happen to be missing me!   So it's Arrivederci to  The GARDEN OF VILLA LEONE I hope you enjoyed this delayed garden tour  and I Thank You All for coming to visit! I will try and get the conclusion of the top floor of the Villa posted before fall.  Maybe by then I will have mastered this new Blogger format: only time will tell. ciao  for now

elizabeth  WWG1 WGA