blog
Country Dish
Two things make a moss dish work. Drainage, so water leaves quickly rather than standing, and almost no soil, because moss takes nothing from it and depth only invites weeds. A six inch dish needs well under a quarter of a square foot of moss.
Marrying moss with stone is the perfect match, but when moss is coupled with pottery, it becomes a creative pairing.
That’s exactly what happened, when David Spain of Moss and Stone Gardens collaborated with Marsha Owen, of Marsha Owen Pottery, to design stoneware containers for various bryophytes.
Meeting David’s exacting specifications for profile and drainage, holes are included in this dish so water is quickly whisked away. David’s vision was to create a low profile piece, “To be in proportion to the bryophyte’s low profile plantings and minimal soil requirements,” says David.
Measuring a mere six inches long, this Marsha Owen oval pottery container, allows for a Lilliputian dish that begs to be picked up and held.
David used two lichens, Parmelia and Cladonia rangiferina, the reindeer lichen, alongside the mosses Campylopus introflexus and Dicranum scoparium, which we sell as mood moss or rock cap moss. The fern, Asplenium platyneuron, was also used as an added element to the design.
“My goal here was to complement the beautiful cream glaze of Marsha’s pottery and to use as much diversity as I could for this very small vessel without becoming too busy,” says David.
The design offers the perfect pairing of the lichen’s pale colors, complementing the pottery and the vibrant glossy greens for contrast.
Perfect for a tabletop setting where it can be admired up close.
A six inch dish takes a quarter of a square foot of moss.