Herb-alicious Centerpiece

I am so in love with our new dining table centre piece. It’s something that just happened after stocking up on herbs at the Royal Botanical Gardens spring plant sale. It’s still too early to plant them out in our zone 5-6 garden so we needed to find a place to keep them safe inside but still be easy to water. And the thing with living in a small cottage-style home is that there’s no hiding anything. We could have lined them up on a plant tray beneath our living room window with the others but we chose to show them off in all their natural glory on our dining table.

How’d we get this lovely look? It was super easy! We had eight plants that needed a home and I thought it would be nice if they took up residence on our table, especially since most of them are herbs. Setting them all loosey-goosey on our table was one option except it seemed haphazard and unfinished. My first thought was to put them on a large dinner plate but that wasn’t ideal since our plates are round so it wouldn’t have been a great fit, though it would have done an awesome job containing the runoff from watering.

Then I remembered we had this square Ikea dish that could work, so I dug it out and it ended up being the perfect fit! I lined up our eight potted plants on it, looking for an arrangement the worked best with the cascading plants on the corners. Since I had two sweet potatoes I put them on opposite diagonals for balance. But with only eight pots I still had one spot left. I was going to leave the middle open then I remembered a jar of fresh cut parsley from the market in our kitchen so I dropped it in, and bam we were done. I know the jar isn’t perfect, but it makes the whole thing feel a lot more casual so I’m pretty happy about it.

So which plants did we choose?

• two sweet potatoes
• sweet marjoram
• variegated marjoram
• scented geranium
• corkscrew rush
• nasturtium
• siam queen basil

Darren’s favourite, hands down, is the corkscrew rush. I think he secretly wishes he’d picked up a few. Personally, I love how crazy looking it is, kinda reminds me of Darren’s hair some days, in a very good way. It’s an annual that Darren was told he may be able to nurse through the winter indoors. Maybe we should look into how to propagate it…

My favourite is the sweet marjoram. Not just because of how yummy it tastes on eggs, but because this particular plant just has a beautiful, sensual shape that seems so dainty and delicate yet very happy.

And what did this whole thing cost? I feel like it didn’t cost us anything since the herbs are destined for the garden in a few short weeks and we already had the dish. But lets say you wanted to make one from scratch. Well, each of the potted herbs were $3 and the Ikea dish was $7.99, putting you at a grand total of $34.99. Not bad. You could create a similar, smaller arrangement with the smaller version of Ikea’s Ideal dish that would hold four plants bringing your cost down to $18.99.

I always find it soothing to have bits of nature spread throughout our home. What are you doing this spring to add some life to your space? Are you bringing in some plants? Adding some bright pops of colour? Or are you throwing open those sashes and letting in the sunshine and fresh air?