Plants that are to-scale with dolls

I love plants, but my parents and I never keep any due to our seven fur babies, being our priority and living in a place where it snows during winter and there's not enough rain all year round. There's a garden with flowers and some vegetables, but it's hard to maintain let alone bring indoors, or be miniature.

However, I know that there are miniature cacti, that don't take a lot of maintenance if any, and also Bonsai trees, which might actually be high maintenance but are miniature for the most part. Probably both are suitable for dolls of all sizes, even the larger ones. Hope that helps, and good luck with your search! (:

 

The tiny ikea succulents and cacti work well in scale sometimes! They are more of a prop than good foliage background, though.

I have an umbrella plant with small leaves that looks great in scale with dolls.

 

Anything with small leaves work well, like "String of Frogs". I also like viney plants because you can move their vines around and drape them across things. I have a lot of orchids and find them relatively easy flowers to keep. Just make sure they are planed with airy moss, not soil, water them when the moss gets dry, and keep them in an airy place.

Ponytail palms can be small or larger, potted or inbound, and are also relatively easy to care for depending on where you live.

For aquatic plants I only keep mariposa and Java moss, both are relatively easy.

 

Some miniature roses are in scale for dolls, but they vary. There are a few varieties that are one to two feet high. Others are actually large bushes with small flowers. I had some for a number of years and one of them (variety Si), had flowers the size of a dime. If you are near a nursery, some of them have assortments of plants suitable for "fairy gardens". Most of those would be in or close to scale. Thyme has small leaves and there are lots of varieties.

 

For photo shoots I keep some silk artificial greenery & flowers among my props. No watering or green thumb required, & I can swap out seasons easily. For this I've just browed floral sections at the hobby stores to find smaller versions of ivy, roses, wild flowers, fall leaves & even winter holiday "evergreen" plus a bag of moss to scatter across ground when setting up photo screen shoots.
Actual plants would be lovely, but I travel too often to keep them well.

 

Any " fairy garden' plant that you can grow works perfectly! Larger nurseries often have a fairy garden section. Etsy has miniature plants also! In coastal California my tiny plants grow outside year round, but I also plant some in a clear glass large fish bowl in the sun for the winter. ( like an open terrarium) If you leave the little plants in tiny plastic pots you can set them in the clear glass bowl or terrarium on wet gravel, and take them out for photo shoots. They will need lots of sun to thrive, or they do have artificial plant lights if you don't have a sunny window!The wet gravel keeps the tiny pots from drying out and you don't to water them very often! I've grown miniature orchids, miniature water lillies, and dozens of miniature terrarium plants. Tiny live plants look amazing in photos with dolls!

 

Seconding CheshireCat. Most plants that are suited to terrariums are good for dolls. Fittonia, pepperomia, finer-leaved tillandisia, pilea, and salginella are all excellent if you can keep up with their humidity requirements when you aren't using them for photography. I also like some sedums and echeveria when they are very young. Wheatgrass/cat grass looks pretty good too. The miniature orchids from Trader Joe's work well and the miniature daffodils that are generally available in early spring are great for 60cm dolls.

 

Selaginella, mosses, Ficus vines with small leaves like quercifolia or pumila, Sweet alyssum flower, baby's breath, forget me nots, johny jump ups, little tea roses, some peperomias...

 

The smallest miniature African violets are a good match for larger dolls... Teacup lotus are small, too. For garden plants, try Labrador violets and Sweet Pea tomatoes. (Sweet Pea tomato plants are pretty large, but the fruit is doll-scale. )

 

Depending on where you live it may also be worth reading up on native wild plants as there are quite often ones with tiny flowers or leaves. For example I’m in the UK and a group of native plant species called Stitchwort has wonderful delicate white flowers that are around for most of the summer. Different types have different sized flowers and I used the ones from the smallest species in the hair of my Iplehouse fid Harace in my profile pic.

A lot of alpine plants also tend to be quite small too and compact in shape, dwarf pines can usually be found at garden centres, shrubs used for topiaries also tend to have small foliage (e.g box and cotoneaster).

It’s also worth looking up plants suitable for reptile vivariums as you don’t want ones that grow too fast or big.

As for aquatic species, not sure how aquatic you mean. Most truly aquatic plants aren’t going to be strong enough to hold themselves upright without the support of water and will dry out very quickly when removed. Anubias (which come in various sizes) will last longer out of water as they have tough leathery leaves and they’re slow growing which is helpful.
Pond plant wise there are ‘dwarf’ lilies although they still grow pretty leaves. Some floating plants such as duckweed have small individual leaves too.

Mosses and liverworts are normally fairly small foliage wise but need to be kept moist.

Don’t know if any of that helps.

 

I saw someone do a photo shoot with their outdoor (edible) garden sprouts and they looked amazing. I'm a plant person, but for a moment I was totally perplexed trying to figure out what they could be because the scale worked SO well.

 

I don't really know any of the names of the plants, but if you go to a garden center/nursery and look in the fairy garden plant section there are many very small plants that are doll scale friendly.

 

I grow some plants, but for photography I usually find small trees and shrubs with tiny leaves in the park.

 

Bamboo, if kept in pots will stay small. It will only grow to fit the pot. I use it in my doll pictures, it looks like a potted tree for my doll pictures and then I set it back for display when I am done with it and it goes back to being a table plant.

 

Bonzai would be great I think ! But it's really difficult to keep it healthy... succulents are also great looking when it's small. I'm planning to make a garden but I'm not sure about the plant I will grow in