biancadarc.com Blog

Toadstools for Your Garden

Spring is well on its way in my part of the country. The daffodils are everywhere, along with some hyacinths and even a few tulips! So it’s time to start cleaning the garden up a bit and get it ready for the new planting and growing season. I like a garden to have a bit of whimsy, so here’s a little crafty tidbit passed down in my family. Gnomes and fairies are said to inhabit fairy rings of toadstools. There’s something particularly magical about the poisonous red toadstools with white dots.

If you want those magical ‘shrooms in your garden, but don’t actually want the danger of poisonous fungus, here’s a way to make your own garden statuary mushrooms!

You’ll need a couple of bowls of varying depths and sizes, some plastic wrap, old newspaper red and white paint, cement and a few sturdy dowels or sticks. Here’s how you do it:

- Line the inside of the bowls with plastic wrap so that the edges hang over and you have something to pull on when you want to remove your newly-formed toadstools.

- Then line that with a layer of old newspaper to help soak up some of the liquid from the cement.

- Mix your cement and pour it into your “molds” – the paper and plastic lined bowls. Make some shallow and some deep to vary what your toadstools will look like when done.

- Poke a hole in the bottom of each one where the dowel or stick will sit when it’s dry. You can even leave the sticks/dowels in while they dry. Push them deep enough so that they have a good grip on the toadstool, but not so deep that they will poke out of the top.

- Let them set. Probably overnight.

- When they’re hard, pop them out of the molds and remove the plastic and paper. Let them dry fully.

- Paint them red. I use acryllic craft paint available in most stores. The outdoor kind is better, but all acryllic paint is waterproof after it’s dry, so the cheap stuff works fine too. Let the red coat dry. Reapply if you need to make them redder or cover any bald spots. Let them dry completely.