“Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch calledProfessor Sprout, where they learnt how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.”

-Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

I can’t believe I didn’t post this last year! After cleaning up my list of drafts I came across my ‘ready-to-go’ post on how I pulled together Herbology at the Harry Potter party last year. Some more Harry Potter inspiration for anyone wanting to throw a party!

Here’s what you’ll find in this post:

• What we put in the cupboards
• A free downloadable label for the Chinese Fireball Dragon Dung Compost

The room

The herbology room was actually the laundry room, which our guests had to walk through to get to the toilet (it’s a very Aussie house thing), hence being decorated up.

The washing machine and drier were covered with canvas (you can find this in your hardware store in the form of dropcloth in the paint section). A square wooden tabletop placed on top of the washing machine held herbology textbooks and the dragon dung compost (Professor Sprout’s preferred brand).

Our (yellow!) cupboards were also covered and had a black cabinet placed up on the counter, while the sink had a wood tabletop placed across it, on which we placed the plants.

Finally, the shower had metal shelving placed inside, and held rows of plants. The trick, just haul in lots of your potted plants-we mostly used ferns, and rather vine like ones (if you’re in Australia, wipe down so you aren’t bringing in any redbacks or other nasty spiders. They love to hide under the lip of the container). Around all the plants, fairy lights were draped through.

 The cupboards

Inside the cupboards we put all sorts of bits and bobs that you would think Professor Sprout would keep stored.

• Garden gloves
• burlap bags
• pots of different sizes and materials ( cardboard, terracotta,
• A metal watering can with a ‘flesh eating slug repellent’
• twine
• sticks
• little bottles filled with seeds
• seed labels for Devil’s Snare, Fanged Geranium, Gillyweed, Mimbulus Mimbletonia and Mandrake from TheRPF.com

Dragon Dung Compost

Professor Sprout’s preferred variety of fertiliser– we opted for the Chinese Fireball version, organic of course! To make, print out the label we designed up. It’s already backwards so you can print it on iron on transfer paper.

For the bag, we chose a rough textured bag. Inside, first lined it with some plastic, then stuffed in wads of newspaper to ‘fluff’ it up.

To finish it off, we covered the newspaper with dirt. Although the original concept was to make huge paper mache balls and cover it with a dirt like texture, to make it came from a dragon.

Next to the compost, we placed one of the textbooks, One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore. You can find the printable book cover on TheRPF.com. One of the other textbooks you might find in Herbology is Flesh-Eating Trees of the World.

The mandrake

This little guy was my pride and joy, and out of all the props, the first thing I started on. I guess I needed a mandrake! I can’t quite explain how I made him. I used only one or two photos for reference, and for materials I used:

• wire for the frame
• clay for all the detail work
• fake leaves
• real roots for his arms and legs/hands and feet
• acrylic paint
• for all the clay detail work, I just used my hands and fingernails to sculpt