If you love everything that blooms this season, you'll appreciate the function and simple sophistication of the right container for your flowering plants. Artist Catherine Krafcik introduced me to her handmade hypertufa pot designs, labeled Crazy Lady in the Window. She was one of few vendors not selling live plants at the Asheville Herb Festival, but her product fit right into the ecologically friendly theme.
Krafcik makes her pots in an age-old tradition. "This has been around for hundreds of years," she details, "It started with a stone called tufa which was a little bit porous, used for prized orchids and animal troughs. And of course man being what they are, overmined it, so they came up with a recipe to make it quickly and it's hypertufa."
She's glad to share all of the ingredients, "It's Portland cement, peatmoss, vermiculite and water, all stuff that came out of the ground. So it's all natural, requires no energy or electricity to cure it, so it's very ecofriendly."
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| Catherine Krafcik of Crazy Lady in the Window |
Krafcik and her husband have been doing artistic glass and stone etching work for decades. Then about seven years ago she starting making the pots. They function well because they're lighter and more porous than other concrete pots. "I found one at an agricultural show and took it home and put a plant in it. Within two weeks, the plant was twice as big, so we downloaded the information off the internet and I've been making them ever since."
The Krafciks have a small studio at their home in Celo, North Carolina, outside Burnsville. They regularly offer the hypertufa pots for sale at Israel & Sons Nursery at the WNC Farmers Market in Asheville, Thyme in the Garden in Woodfin, and Reems Creek Nursery in Weaverville. You can learn more about the gardening containers at Visual Dialogue.