The lush and fresh fixtures in a woodland setting are fertile ground for picking when it comes to accenting your rooms. Take these ideas using mushrooms, moss, and other details to give your space a wonderful woodsy feel.
Bring spring foragers and a lush woodland carpet to the dinner table. Assorted mushrooms, including cremini, Trumpet Royale, honshimeji, and enoki, rise from a bed of cushion moss and lend an unexpected touch of whimsy. A wide ironstone tureen showcases the arrangement and helps anchor it among the table's place settings.
The rewards of the literally dirt-simple process of spore printing -- when combined with an eye for composition and an aesthetic rather than scientific paper choice -- are decidedly modernist, somewhat otherworldly works of art.
Nature is everyday magic. Take the acorn: Within this common seed resides the genetic material for a 90-foot oak tree that will live 100 years or more. A mature tree can drop millions of acorns in its lifetime, plenty for creatures to eat as well as for humans to collect -- and to fashion into this charming mirror with little more than dabs of glue.
An inviting wreath composed of cushion moss will thrive all year.
Pinecone "flowers" with glowing centers fill a simple vase in this exquisite arrangement.
Give your outdoor table a lush centerpiece with a fun, graphic twist. Fill a galvanized-metal planter (available at garden centers) with fresh potting soil. Inside, arrange Irish moss in two shades (we used dark-green Sagina subulata and chartreuse S. subulata 'Aurea') to create a checkerboard pattern. After a few days, plant the moss in your yard.
Bring a bit of the forest indoors by decorating a lamp finial with a pinecone, plain or spray-painted silver.
Making beautiful terrariums is a perfect way to bring the outside indoors, any time of year.
Unify a group of family photos, both old and new, with frames bedecked with pinecone details. The embellishments can be as simple as a single row of scales or as intricate as a profusion of delicate clusters.
This unusual, lush display is rustic and modern at once -- and inexpensive and easy enough to make yourself.
These climbers include flowers made from Sabulosum cone scales, buds from the tamarack tree, and leaves, which are really single Norway spruce cone scales. The finished vine can be tightly coiled around a candlestick.
Also called grape hyacinth, muscari is a royal-blue bulb that begins to bloom in April. A few of these simple arrangements make a wonderful nature-inspired scene, perfect for a table or a mantle.
This simple arrangement will fill your home with the aroma of a walk in the woods. Pick a branch with interesting, sculptural lines and lots of fresh needles, and collect a few handfuls of pinecones to use as a frog to steady the branch. When you include woody plants like this in arrangements, cut the end that will be submerged with pruning shears; this allows it to absorb water more easily. Use a widemouthed glass vase so the pinecones are visible; fill with water, and set the branch firmly among the cones.
Whether the materials come from your backyard or a garden center, it's easy to incorporate natural elements into the centerpiece of an alfresco dinner.
No need to worry that these mushrooms are poisonous. They're made from crown pumpkins and butternut, delicata, and carnival squashes.
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