Jan. 3, 2004

Saint Paul Pioneer Press

Garden Path

Marge Hols, Columnist

 

Step right up and make your own stepping-stones

 

Accessorizing your garden is so trendy that sales of everything from arbors to gazing balls to fairies have soared.

 

But there’s an alternative to buying some accessories. By creating your own stepping-

stones, you can save money, personalize your designs and have fun in the process. It’s also is a great way to keep the garden fires burning, since January is way too early to start seeds.

 

I recently joined a group of women from the St. Paul Garden Club for a workshop in making stepping-stones at the White Bear Center for the Arts. The results were fabulous, ranging from botanical to funky to downright glitzy.

 

Sally Brown, a garden club member and St. Paul artist who teaches pottery at the center, inspired us by providing a smorgasbord of molds and colorful decorations. There were pieces of broken crockery, beads of all sizes and colors, river rocks and pebbles, shells and small ornaments, tiny mirrors, cookie cutters, and rubber stamp designs and individual letters and numbers.

 

“Break out of the mold and let your imagination run wild,” Brown urged the group.

 

When Mary Stanley, who tends a large native plant garden in Dellwood, created a neutral stepping stone embossed with a fern, dragonfly and the word, “Welcome,” Brown encouraged her to think outside the box.

 

“Everything was so perfect,” Brown says. “I told her on the next stone I wanted her to be messy.” Stanley responded by embellishing a stone with a sunburst in gold and silver beads.

 

The family cat had a paw in a stepping stone Roddie Turner created for her St. Paul parterre garden. Turner used pieces of a favorite Majolica plate her cat had broken along with a brown English transferware plate that had fallen off a wall.

 

“Now when you break dishes at home it’s not the end of the world,” Brown commented. You can preserve a broken dish forever.”

 

Stepping-stones don’t have to be big. Turner made tiny ones embossed with a single word: Seek. Joy. Brown used a cottage-shaped cookie cutter to make a small stone complete with house numbers for a hostess gift.

 

She says for her daughter’s graduation party, an ice cream social, the family used an ice cream cone cookie cutter to decorate a stone. (Brown also planted annuals in her daughter’s school colors in her garden, forming numerals of the graduation year.)

 

Although kits are available for making stepping stones, which is how Brown got started, you can assemble your own supplies. Stonemason’s vinyl cement patch is available in a 25-pound bag at Menards for $5. If you want to color the cement, buy grout and plaster colorant.

 

For molds, use foil cake pans and roasting pans in rounds and rectangles from the supermarket or plastic shapes from a craft store such as Michaels Arts & Crafts or Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts. These stores also sell all manner of beads, shells and stones. To use old dishes, wrap in a towel and hit with a hammer to make small pieces.

 

Here’s the drill: Select a mold and lightly spray the inside with vegetable oil. In a tub or bucket, mix a 25-pound bag of stonemason’s vinyl cement patch with 5 to 6 cups of water. Mix slowly to a putty-like consistency. Let stand 5 minutes and remix. You may want to wear a dust mask and vinyl gloves for mixing.

 

Use a trowel to smooth cement into molds, filling to the top. Make impressions of designs, shapes, words or numbers in the mortar and decorate with stones, beads, shells and such. If you make a design and don’t like it, just smooth the top with the trowel and start again. You have about 15 minutes to work before the cement sets. Allow stepping-stones to cure for 2 days. Then just pop them out of the molds.

 

White Bear Center for the Arts staff will arrange a workshop in making stepping stones for any group. Call (651) 4076-0597.

 

Although most gardeners use stepping-stones for pathways, Brown creates spaces in her perennial garden with them. “For a while my garden was a jungle of flowers but now I’m thinning it out,” she says. “I’m more choosy about the flowers I plant and I like to create empty spaces with single stones so you can see the plants around them.”