Dish This!

Sliding, sloping, and slightly off centered, with hills and holes adding rhythm and rhyme, this dish rocks.

Indoors or out, this dish is suitable as a tabletop centerpiece or as a focal point, raised on a pedestal, in a shady nook of the garden.

When I first met this dish, I mistook the wood’s growth rings as striations in stone.  I was even more intrigued, when talking to David Spain, co-owner of Moss and Stone Gardens, to learn the container was purchased from a local import store.  “I was inspired by the many contours which are so helpful in transplanting colonies to a new location,” said David.

Indeed, David Spain’s trademark, in my opinion, is his use of the cracks and crevices.  No opening is spared from being filled with soft, seductive green.

“For this dish,” David says, “I chose a uniform and lush palette, using a dominate application of Campylopus introflexus, for its radiant deep green color and sheen.”

The acrocarpus moss, Campylopus introflexus, can be grown in sun or shade, keeping it’s sheen, whether moist or dry.

Another acrocarpus moss used in this creation, is the charming chartreuse colored, Dicranum scoparium’s, adding depth to the design.

Also used in the design is pluerocarp moss Bryandersonia illecebra, a native moss, common to the Piedmont area of North Carolina.

Other plants in the dish design include the fern, Asplenium platyneuron, and mosses, Hypnum and Ceratadon purpureus.

While I like the idea of walking the woods to find a relic to create moss dishes, I’m also comforted to know  wonderful teak root “containers” are available for purchase, satisfying my need for immediate gratification.

I’ll keep this dish design in mind, when I’m out and about, shopping my favorite haunts.