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Dish This!
Cracks and crevices are where a moss dish comes alive. Mood moss, also sold as rock cap moss, mounds into a contour and holds it. Sheet moss fills the flat ground between. Both are sold from a quarter of a square foot, which is more than a dish this size takes.
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 dominant application of Campylopus introflexus, for its radiant deep green color and sheen.”The acrocarpous moss Campylopus introflexus holds its sheen in sun or shade, whether moist or dry. It is not one we supply.Another acrocarpous moss in this creation is the charming chartreuse Dicranum scoparium, which we sell as mood moss or rock cap moss, adding depth to the design.
Also used in the design isthe pleurocarp Bryoandersonia illecebra, a native moss common across the southeastern Piedmont.
Other plants in the dish design include the fern, Asplenium platyneuron, and mosses, Hypnum and Ceratodon 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.
Mood moss and sheet moss, both from a quarter of a square foot.