Beach Combing For Gardeners

The beach has long been my second favorite place, next to the garden of course!  Its there that everything becomes clear and simple, and beach-combing helps me focus as I scan the blank canvas of the sand and shells.  A gardener can get a lot out of the seaside!  Besides the obvious gift of calm and relaxation, you can find seeds for planting, materials for your garden, and plain old inspiration.
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Beach-combing is more than simply looking for seashells!  Truth be told, I scan right over the shells in search of a frosty piece of tumbled sea glass, completely ignoring the whelks in favor of a glossy sea bean or a seedpod.  You may wonder; whats so amazing about a worn piece of broken glass, a big bean or a trashy looking pod?  From a gardeners perspective, everything.  You can grow plants from those seeds, use seaglass and sea beans as garden ornament, and learn from the 'garden' on the dunes.

Sea beans (like this entada gigas or sea heart) wash up on Florida beaches from the tropics in Central and South American rainforests, traveling by floating via the gulf stream and other currents, and are eventually deposited on our shores along with sargassum weed at the high tide line.  Usually beachcombers stay away from the seaweed, since the fresh seashells and sharks teeth are usually found in the surf zone, but they have no idea what they're missing!

Sea beans come in many different species, can be polished and made into jewelry, planted, or simply collected.  As some of you remember, I planted an entada gigas bean earlier this year, and its rambling all over my shrubs at the moment.  They do come from the tropics, so I don't expect it to live through winter.

I find many other seeds on the beach too, like starnut palm seeds and 'Mary's bean', as well as natives like coral beans, mangrove seeds, bay bean, and sea grape.  I recently even found a long cassia fistula pod, with dry seeds still intact and protected by the waterproof pod.  I'll be planting some of the seeds soon, as they appear to be viable!

I also get a lot of creative inspiration from the beach, and I usually lose my cold feet after a walk in the hot sand.  Above is a painting I did that was inspired by aerial photography of the offshore reefs, as well as the glassy wall of a breaking wave.  I embedded transparent and frosty sea glass into the many layers of paint and resin, making the painting take on different looks as the light strikes it throughout the day.

I painted this after having taken a photo at Gamble Rogers State Park on a camping trip.  The dunlins were snatching up mole crabs as they emerged right before the waves crashed.  The group of birds was running right ahead of the breaking waves, and in this painting two waves were converging upon them, which I thought made an interesting composition.

I've brought together my love of the beach, as well as some finds, in a little container for my shady balcony.  The only two plants are coral rhipsalis and cryptanthus, also known as earth star.  I got the idea for this little undersea grouping by noting the similarities of the pink barnacle shells and the earth stars.  They're both the same hue of pink, with radiating lines of the same grayish color too!  As the earth stars grow, I'll find more barnacles to replace the other stuff with.

The 'other stuff' includes a mulch of white and seafoam colored sea glass, sea urchin spines (admittedly purchased and not found) and some pieces of coral that I've salvaged.

What kind of treasures have you found at the beach?

For more...
September Table of Contents
Plant ProfilesCoral Reef Succulent Container
Coral Reef Succulent Container 2
Seabean Sprouted!
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