A green gift | Urban Jungle Bloggers

I made these table favours for a Greek-themed dinner party a couple of weeks ago and thought they’d be perfect to share for this month’s Urban Jungle Bloggers challenge by Igor and Judith: ‘offer a plant to a friend’.

Some friends and I have been taking it in turns to host dinner and we we decided to go with a Greek theme when it was our turn to have everyone over. My husband and I met on Crete and Greece is one of our favourite places in the world so Greek food always brings back happy memories. I wanted to take my time decorating the table for our Greek feast, and fancied making little table favours that would also act as place names for our guests. The wonderful scents of oregano and thyme always remind me of meandering along a sunny pathway in Greece listening to the chorus of cicadas, so I those are the plants I chose to use for my mini green gifts.

I bought a couple of large pots of oregano and thyme and then carefully divided them to make smaller plants for my mini pots. There were eight place settings for dinner, so I planted four oregano pots and four thyme pots.

I popped one on each place setting at the table, with a simple name card and skeleton leaf nestled  into the leaves. I  enjoyed taking my time to decorate the table for our party, and I even made my husband carry in our (very heavy) potted olive tree from the garden to green up the space a bit more!

The evening was fun and relaxed, which is exactly how we wanted it to be – we even played traditional Greek music all night so that it felt like we were in a cosy taverna! On the menu was cheese pie (we left out the sun-dried tomatoes in this recipe), gigantes plaki and tzatziki for a starter, lamb kleftiko and Greek salad for the main, and warm honey cup puddings with homemade pistachio ice cream for dessert. My mouth’s watering just thinking about all the delicious food, and it felt really nice to be able to send our guests home with a gift to remember the night by.