the gift of growth

this herb pot on the pier 1 website gave me a great gift idea for a cooking or gardening enthusiasts in spring or summer. it reminds me of one of martha stewart's gardening tips i've always liked, where she labels pots with a sharpie (way neater than i ever could) so they can be used year after year. i think there is something cathartic about those types of processes in our lives - a certain cyclical repetition that gives our lives a sense of calm and consistency. (can you tell i like calm and consistency?)

the pier 1 pots with the chalkboard rim are nice because they can be easily changed (like when your cilantro dies and you replace it with a lavender plant you buy already grown), and they are something that children can also easily, and colorfully, participate in as well. these will definitely be added it to my stable of gifts to give, maybe as a hostess or housewarming gift.

to make a more significant gift of it, you could give three or four of them, along with a small bag of soil and a few seed packets, possibly with a small gardening caddy with tools like this one. what's nice about this kind of gift is that you can make it a more modest gift, with just the pots and the seeds, or you can embellish it and turn it into a larger gift, all arranged in a basket or a gardening caddy.


another garden-themed gift i am itching to give is these multi-tiered "stack and grow" planters from smith & hawken. i love the idea of them for a small space, and i would love to give it already planted so that all the recipient has to do is water it and watch it grow! i definitely like the idea of doing some plants and some seeds, so when i give it, it would already look great, but would continue to bloom and develop over time. i'm getting all worked up about this idea! i want one!




no matter how you supplement or package these gifts, the sentiment is the same, which is the idea of giving someone a gift, a project, and a living thing of beauty and use all in one. and i always take personal pleasure in the idea that something i have given someone can touch different areas of their lives for years to come - beautiful to look at, sweet to smell, fresh and delicious to taste, and the comfort of coming back to something living year after year. it's why people feel renewed in spring when everything comes back to life, and i jump at the chance to be able to give that feeling to someone for their own home.