Getting Antsy

Spring seemed to be millions of years away, but I was ready to do something. I began to grow very impatient with the frozen ground, and a visit to the Famer's Market inspired me to create an ivy topiary to "dress up" the front porch. So, I went on the Internet looking for a suitable topiary to emulate and maybe some instructions on how to do it.

I found the picture here to the left, and with Ian's help, came up with a plan to create the pyramid-shaped structure using wire mesh. We have tons of Irish ivy growing wild in the back yard, and I planned to transplant some of it onto my topiary. I had great success in Mobile propagating ivy from cuttings, and I hoped to repeat that success with this project. We also found a suitable square pot from Home Depot made of durable cement.

I wasn't sure if the ivy growing in our yard would work well, because it is large-leafed ivy, and all the resources I found on the Internet instructed me to use small-leafed ivy. But, my ivy was free, and I'm going to give it a shot before I spend more money on this project than necessary.

After hours of cutting and shaping the wire mesh and securing the 3 foot long branches of ivy to the structure with florist wire, this is the product of our labor. It's not quite as sleek as our muse, but I think it turned out nicely. It will take a couple months for the ivy to grow and cover the entire pyramid, but I think we did a decent job. Now we need to get to the Screen Door and find a nice finial for the top. We actually purchased enough materials to make two topiaries, but I want to see if the ivy roots before we spend that much time on another one.