Two years
ago, Deb Mackie was already busy - raising ponies, doing freelance
Web design, playing the Scottish harp and holding down a full-time
job - when she added miniature gardening to her plate.
Today, she's a major contender in the miniature-gardening
competition at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Last year Mackie, of
Elkton, Md., won second place in one of the prestigious show's
miniature classes for a scale model of her former house in Arden, a
funky place called the "Chicken Coop," where she once lived with 17
cats.
Photos of Mackie's model, complete with miniature plants, are
featured in the new book "The Philadelphia Flower Show: Celebrating
175 Years" (HarperResource, $45) by Raymond Rogers and Adam Levine.
Mackie is bringing her newest mini-garden, a representation of
the fountain of Peirene in Greece, to this year's Philadelphia
Flower Show, which opens March 7.
In Greek mythology, the Peirene (pronounced pye-REE-nee) was a
favorite watering hole of the Pegasus. Mackie, a fan of horses,
planned to create her own vision of the fountain until she learned
that Peirene was not a mythical place, and that its ruins still
exist near Corinth, Greece. Mackie re-created the fountain and its
surroundings out of Styrofoam covered with paper clay that can be
sanded and painted. Her husband, Jim, a machinist, turned the
plastic columns on his lathe.
The model of the ancient site will be landscaped with tiny
plants, many of them popular with bonsai enthusiasts, including
dwarf ivy, elfin thyme and dwarf Serissa. Like most of the
competitors in the flower show, Mackie has been forcing her plants
with grow lights to get them to look their best. "I've been making
them think it's spring," she says.
Mackie got into miniatures thanks to her friend, Nancy Grube of
Bear, who took her to a meeting of the First State Mini Club.
Mackie, who had done set design and made models of sets for local
theater groups, was immediately hooked. That same year, Mackie and
Grube went to the flower show to look at the mini-garden scenes and
decided "We can do that." The next year Grube's model won first
place in one class, and Mackie came in second.
But don't call Mackie's minis dollhouses. This is art, says
Mackie, who works as art director and webmaster at the Delaware Art
Museum and writes for American Miniaturist magazine.
Her first mini was a comical Western outhouse scene, in which a
cowboy inside the privy has lost his toilet paper and a horse is
walking away with it. The Arden model depicts a wake for Chester,
one of her cats. Like Arden, the house and yard are funky, complete
with broken flowerpots tipped over by a cat and dirty dishes in the
kitchen.
Don't expect Mackie's "Fountain of Peirene" to look like they
just had the opening ribbon-cutting. It will be weathered, a little
overgrown and a bit dirty-looking.
Meetings: 7 p.m. third Thursdays, September through
May, in the cafeteria at Richardson Park Elementary
School, 16 Idella Ave., Christiana Hundred. The next
meeting is March 18.
Annual show: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. March 28 at the Holiday
Inn Select, 630 Naamans Road, near Claymont. $5, seniors
$4.50, 11 and younger $2. No baby strollers are
permitted.
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