While in Pennsylvania last fall, I couldn’t miss a shopping excursion at Terrain, an eye-candy garden shop/nursery that’s a sister-store to Anthropologie.

I visited the flagship Terrain in Glen Mills a few years ago (click for my tour). This time I checked out the Devon location, and while I was slightly disappointed to find it’s much smaller, the floral and gift displays were still beautiful and enticing.

In mid-October, of course, it was all about pumpkins, seedheads, and grasses.

Pumpkins in the nursery yard

This pumpkinesque gray pot was stuffed with mums, a grass, coleus, and agastache, with a papyrus seedhead for decoration.

One terracotta planter was cleverly “mulched” with tiny white pumpkins and globe string lights.

Inside I was seduced by metal-floral wreaths and strands of painted metal ginkgo leaves.

One wall was turned into living wallpaper with pillowy mosses, ferns, and woody vines, all surrounding a stone fireplace with candelabra light above.

What a romantic display.

Succulent pumpkins — where succulents are hot-glued to a bit of dried moss atop a small, flattish pumpkin — have been popular for years, and many variations were on display. This one included colored moss and seedheads and a lotus seedpod spray-painted gold.

There were romantic white ones with dried and silk flowers, leaves, and grasses.

I dubbed this one Goth Pumpkin. Would it be too much to add a few small bats on wires?

The classic orange pumpkin with succulents is my favorite. These are easy to make, actually. When I got home from my trip, feeling inspired, I bought a sack of mini-pumpkins at the grocery store and a few dried florals at a craft store (tiny pinecones, small sticks with berries, and stems with tiny purple flowers), snipped cuttings from ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) I grow at home, and collected dry ball moss from my yard.

Make your own succulent mini-pumpkins

I used hand pruners to cut off the pumpkin stem, without cutting into the flesh of the pumpkin, which could cause it to rot prematurely. Then I used a hot-glue gun to spread a circle of glue around the cut stem. I layered on moss, which I’d pulled apart and flattened. Then I hot-glued floral stems, topping those with the succulent cutting. To fill in gaps around the base of the succulent, I hot-glued tiny pinecones and extra berries. I even made a few stacked-pumpkin towers with a bit of moss, dried flowers, and pinecones around the edges, topped with a tiny pinecone and berries.

I gave these out as gifts and kept a trayful for my dining table. Easy and fun! When it was time for Christmas decor to go up, I pulled apart the pumpkins and put them in the compost bin. The succulents were still healthy and firm, even after a month glued to a pumpkin with no water or soil (gotta love succulents!), so I planted them up in a pot. I’ll definitely make more next fall.

Up next: Paxson Hill Farm’s stunning country garden, with many enticing paths to explore. For a look back at Winterthur’s Enchanted Woods children’s garden and reflecting pool, click here.

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Digging Deeper

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