May '99 - A demonstration of Saikei by Brad Smith

 

Saikei, which means 'landscape in a tray', is quite easy to achieve and can be very rewarding to do. You'll need a tray, soil, peat muck, rocks, trees, moss and soil dressing. Design your landscape in accordance with your materials. Rugged craggy rocks might give a coastal or island effect while smoother rocks might invoke feelings of years of windswept plains. After a layer of soil, arrange your rocks to represent the plain, or the island, or the mountain, or the cave...in fact, anything you wish. After the rocks are in place, put some greenery into the landscape by adding the appropriate plants. Don't forget to use trees suited to the type of landscape you are creating.
Trees on a windswept plain should be planted on an angle and have gnarled trunks, whereas trees on a rocky outcrop might be growing more upright. You may need to build 'walls' out of your muck so that you can have different levels of soil throughout the planting. Do this before adding your trees. It's sometimes good to get a tree planted high on a rock. This is easy to achieve if you plan ahead and glue some wire onto the rock to hold the tree in place. I also glued some rocks together to create my tall centre rock. The adhesive I used was Plasti Bond.
After you've designed the landscape and planted all your trees, it's time to add some 'atmosphere'. Miniature Alpine plants, mosses, lichens and soil dressings. There is no 'rules' to what you can use here but don't forget to keep them proportionate in size and appropriate to position. Eg. A small fern planted in the shade of a tall rock can look terrific. Use the moss to bind the muck together and hide it's surface, and also use the moss to cover all the bare soil surface.The moss will help to keep the planting moist and join all the elements together. Lastly, sprinkle top dressings of gravel to simulate pathways, seafoam, water, desert etc in appropriate areas of the planting. Keep the colour of the gravel in harmony with the planting.

back to photoarchive99	Guess whose birthday it was? Yes, the most photographed woman on the internet, Lola! Happy ?0th birthday!