How To Set Up A Plant Terrarium

Experience like your living room could exercise with some plant love?

Terraria are enclosed glass containers with a cute display of wearisome-growing plants. They are a great way to get a dose of nature indoors.

These mini glasshouses are piece of cake to maintain, and every creation is unique.

A terrarium — Terrarium, Emma Chandler © RBG Kew

Where to brainstorm?

Yous probably have a few glass containers around your house – from old jam jars to big pasta containers.

Pick any container that gives yous enough room to get to a plant once it's in there.

No lid? No problem!

Open terraria are better for cacti and succulents. Tropical plants, like mosses or air plants, fare better when you create a humid environment so brand sure there's a hat closed on tight.

You'll also need:

Minor stones or pebbles: Grab some gravel from your front end thou for the base of operations layer to help drainage along
Soil: Potting soil is vital. Most soils will work fine for this, and you only need nigh a handful
Activated charcoal: This might not exist in everyone's sheds, but easy to find. This volition keep your terrarium h2o fresh and avoids bacteria growing
A choice of small tools: pencil/chopstick, little trowels, long spoons will practice
Ornament: Anything you lot fancy to arrive truly unique. Moss makes a colourful base, or picayune objects can bring it to life
Plants, of course

Selection the right plant

Choose a irksome-growing and small plant for your terrarium.

Consider a range of leafy plants, succulents and cacti, picking the right ane for your open (dry out) or closed (humid) ecosystem.

Here are some suggestions, but there are many more than out in that location:

Air plant (Tillandsia stricta)
Nervus plant (Fittonia)
Meadow spikemoss (Selaginella apoda)
Polka dot institute (Hypoestes phyllostachy)
Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum)
Earth star bromeliad (Cyrpthanthus)
Inch plant (Tradescantia zebrina)
Hen and chicks (Echeverias)

Why not get creative and pattern a prepare of 'scenes', from a fairy tale woodland to an arid desert-scape?

Or keep it minimal and merely have the one to start.

Setting up your terrarium

This can get messy, so protect your work surface if you're edifice this in your living room.

In your clean and dry container, layer upwards your pebbles to about ii-3cm.
- Top tip: Vary your design past turning the container on its side instead, so the chapeau is pointing to the side rather than upwardly
Next add the charcoal. You lot just need to scatter it beyond. (If you accept some sphagnum moss, you lot can add information technology after this).
Layer on the potting soil. Ensure there is plenty, so the institute roots sit comfortably deep inside information technology.
Your biggest found goes in first.
- Using your small-scale trowel, or long-handled spoon, make a pigsty for the establish.
- Gently place the constitute into the soil. Y'all can employ a pencil-like tool to fill in and flatten the soil around it.
- Brand sure your plant has plenty room to abound a petty; don't cramp them confronting the drinking glass.
- If you take more, keep adding the residual of your plants.
Identify in other stones, or maybe some moss or sand to comprehend up the soil if you want to.
Put in any finishing touches.
Close the lid – or don't!

Meridian tip: Want some moss? Using a spring tine rake or a soil rake, rake over your garden. In the shady $.25, some moss might grow and you can put that in your cosmos.

Keeping your terrarium live

Choose a spot with plenty of natural light (but non in directly sunlight)
Spray your terrarium with water every couple of weeks; or when the soil is dry to the affect
Keep an centre on it. These tiny greenhouses tin form condensation when they are airtight. A little is okay, only if the glass becomes foggy it might be that yous've watered information technology also much

You can remove the peak and dry information technology out for a few hours to clear it up.

The kickoff terrarium

The Wardian instance was an early form of a terrarium.

Famously, information technology was discovered past blow.

Dr Nathaniel Baghsaw Ward, a smashing amateur naturalist, collected a moth cocoon in a sealed glass canteen along with some fern leaves and soil and left information technology for three years.

The plant started to sprout and grow in a little microcosm of its tropical environment, proving that plants could survive without watering in a closed drinking glass example.

Ward built a glass box to assistance transport alive plants across the world, testing information technology in 1833 on a journey between London and Sydney.

This Wardian case transformed botanical exploration, enabling collectors to safely transport specimens back to Kew.