Succulent Garden

Welcome to Robot Circus and the Succulent Garden at Henderson Row

My name is Pauline Farrar. I created Robot Circus and the succulent garden with my DH James. Like many people today I live with a health condition that means I have to spend a lot of time indoors. I designed the garden to encourage people to stop and chat.

The garden took a year to plan. Succulents were the obvious choice as they require little work and don’t need to be in continuous wet soil to draw up moisture like other plants. In fact, Scotland’s rainy weather means I can get away with hardly asking my DH to water my succulents.

But how to display them in a creative way to make people stop? Then it came to me…
The house was filled with my late mum’s possessions. Some remained as keepsakes, most were given to charity but the old worn out items that were destined for landfill, I decided to plant.

So Mum’s 1970’s Parker Knoll chair, lamp shade, bread bin, army shoes, washboard and cast iron bathtubs, typewriter, trugs, drawers, pails, buckets, tea pots and crockery, even a rusty old bike were put to good use.

Nervous that my new idea would not work, I put out a small teapot and a pair of shoes and sat by the window to listen…
Buoyed up by the laughter and responses, it was full steam ahead!