Big city life mostly comes with small spaces and even if you are lucky to own your little green patch, its not easy to take care of plants everyday. This is where compact ‘green’ beauties called terrariums come in. A transparent globe or similar container in which plants are grown indoors, is a world wide trend. An amazing miniature garden with its own eco system, terrariums are not just aesthetically pleasing but also environmentally friendly.
In this DIY post, we bring you Aparna, a Delhi based terrarium expert and a go-green enthusiast who will take you through a step by step guide to building your own little terrarium. Her love for the miniature globed gardens is apparent and a course in L A only furthered her belief in her calling. Here she demystifies terrariums and helps you build one for your home.
You would need:
- Clean, glass containers with large enough openings to place plants inside
- Small stones (gravel, pebbles, broken pottery or something similar)
-
Charged charcoal (available at your local nursery)
- Soil (With coco peat)
- Plants (depending on the size of the container)
- Accessories to put in the terrarium
- Chopsticks or kitchen tongs (optional)
To start with, you would need a glass container, it could be a basic glass vessel or a tumbler. To keep things easy we took a fish bowl since its easily available everywhere. (Although if planting a cacti or a succulent, try opting for a large opening container otherwise for plants that may need more water like a fern, then you can go for a vessel with small opening.)
Put some pebbles in it, which you can get from any aquarium shop or a nursery and then over the pebbles put some crushed charcoal.
After that cover it with dry moss and then again a layer of crushed charcoal over it.
Then put the final layer of soil in this case it was a mix of coco peat and soil together.(Do ensure your soil is as per the plant, although our expert, Aparna uses her secret soil mix in making her terrariums). This soil layer would hold the plant, due to which it should be atleast a 2 inch layer or more.
Put in the plants (using a chopstick or a pencil would help in planting the roots well). And spruce it up with some accessories like glass pebbles, small rocks, sea shells or a lazy cat like the one we have used.
Once done making your miniature live garden, do not forget to tag us on your insta or Fb post.
In the end here are some things to remember, while taking care of a terrarium, that Aparna suggests to all her clients:
- Place the terrarium in high indirect sunlight but not in direct sunlight.
- Do not over water your plants, add water in small quantities every 3-4 days. Do use RO water preferably and do not water the plants directly in their roots.
- Remove any dead or diseased parts of a plant from the terrarium.
- Do prune part of the plants that have outgrown the container or have become unshapely.
Aparna, through “Nature in Vogue”, offers bespoke magical miniature ecosystems. She believes that gifting a terrarium is more than giving flowers. It’s more than any material gift. It’s an offering of wonder and marvel – something very personal yet connected altogether.
Nature in Vogue reveals how these classic miniature gardens can be envisioned in a fashionable way. Do visit her Facebook page –https://www.facebook.com/
