Figure B

"The reference to Pablo is twofold," James explains. "It's my chair, and it looks as though it was created by a famous artist with the same name. Naturally, it's not a Picasso but it's a cool chair, don't you think?"

Figure D

As you can see, this chair has no seat, at least not a very comfortable one. "So what I'm going to do is fashion a seat (of sorts) with plants," he explains. "To do that, I'll need a frame."

James creates a frame from galvanized steel mesh. With the frame sized to fit the scale of the seat, and formed to hold roughly three inches of potting mix, he places a cocoa liner, sized to fit, within the frame along the base. He stuffs the interior rim of the frame with moistened moss, which will not only hold the potting mix in place but also prevent it from drying out too quickly. With the moss in place, he adds the potting mix.

James chooses two different plants for the chair, a dwarf mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus and a moneywort known as creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia). Both plants prefer a fair amount of shade, and both are shallow rooted.

Figure G

James puts the mondo grass in the center of the seat, packing the potting mix firmly around the root balls, and then he plants the creeping Jenny around the perimeter of the seat in the same manner.

Once the plants are in place, James gives the seat a thorough soaking. James warns that plantings like this require regular watering, perhaps as often as every day, as well as weekly douses of compost tea.