For Your Nest: Tradescantia in one of Nature's Original Containers

As you do your fall clean-up, are you cutting back grasses and foliage? I have daylily leaves now resembling hay, dried grasses, and browned stems that once supported Hosta flowers. Rather than send this off for disposal, I decided to utilize it. You might like to do the same. Why not fashion one of the most charming containers imaginable for an indoor plant?  Why not make a nest for your nest?

For the graceful Tradescantia fluminensis Nanouk Tricolor plant, I aimed to enhance a container so it could hold its own in the shadow of artfully “watercolored” foliage. With dried materials from outside, I created that enhancement. The “nest” was everything I wanted it to be.

If you have come across nests in nature, you know they are exquisitely designed. Our feathered friends are masters of their craft. My work would be less masterful, but I hoped it would result in something charming. And Tradescantia fluminensis would take comfort in knowing a beautiful planter-wrap had been made with love, just for it.

I took these steps in crafting my nest:

Step 1: I gathered dried materials. My closest allies in this project were grasses and thin leaves including those of Stella D’Oro lilies. These natural, dried materials would offset the pinkish-purples, creams, and greens of Tradescantia fluminensis Nanouk Tricolor. 

Step 2: I held up the Tradescantia grow-pot and bent a once-green Hosta stem around its base. I did not plan to build my nest directly around the pot, but I wanted to be sure it would be sized right.

Step 3: I secured this stem into a circle using floral wire. I gathered a clump of grass-like foliage and wired it onto this base, using wire to “sew” up and down through the hoop I had just fashioned. The dried material looked best positioned in the same direction, but this was easy: For my clean-up outside, I had cut foliage by lifting it up from plants and cutting at the base. All fronds and leaves fell into line. 

Step 4: I continued bending clumped stems, leaves, and grasses to cover the circumference of the starting circle. Dried Astilbe flowers added panache to the grasses that were my architectural mainstays.

Step 5: I first built this circular structure up, as if shaping a bowl. Once the nest was the desired height for my Tradescantia, I built downward, tapering slightly. I created a base by adding flattened clumps of material across, building on the horizontal plane and employing my wire to firm things up.

I wired in a few decorative pieces… a berry branch here, another dried Astilbe flower there. And while my original plan was to hide traces of wire, in the end, I did not. I placed the Tradescantia-filled grow-pot in the structure I had built. My nest looked good.

Speaking of looking good: Tradescantia is a large family of Spiderworts. You have seen them outside with tri-petaled blooms emerging from balloon-like buds. Tradescantia fluminensis Nanouk Tricolor has foliage that is “electric” with color. Leaf undersides have a purple cast; tops are variegated and sometimes catch the light in a way that makes them look illuminated from within.

Tradescantia fluminensis Nanouk Tricolor shares its most stunning tones and flowers in sufficient indirect light. Lower light can cause it to take on more greens or turn pale—with both states easily addressed by moving Tradescantia to the light for a “re-charge”.

Doing best with even moisture, Tradescantia likes regular watering. But instructions often say not to water into its crown, so I will heed this advice to avoid seeing any unfortunate rot on a plant I so love. 

And while I also love my nest, I know it will not be the right container in which to keep this particular plant forever. I am sure you will find the same: Tradescantia fluminensis likes legroom, so re-pot it when roots appear crowded. Ideally, your original nest can be employed as a home for a new plant. And ideally, you will do this at a time when you can build a larger nest for your beloved Tradescantia.