How To Create a Terrarium or Mini Indoor Garden

by Kit Wertz

Pic­tured above is a suc­cu­lent ter­rar­i­um I cre­at­ed using washed peb­bles, three kinds of suc­cu­lents, sand and some sea shells. I was inspired to cre­ate this based on the rocky shore­line I call home in Palos Verdes. This lit­tle ter­rar­i­um actu­al­ly reminds me of the tide­pools in the many coves we have near my home.

LEARN TO MAKE A SUCCULENT TERRARIUM WITH US: Come to our March 3, 2012 “Liv­ing Art Piece with Suc­cu­lents” class at The Hunt­ing­ton Library and learn how to make this type of design while adding some fresh flow­ers you can change out as you like!

Mini Indoor Gardens Make a Comeback

We are see­ing a new trend with our flo­ral design col­leagues and that’s design­ing in ter­rar­i­ums. This arti­cle will intro­duce you to the con­cept and tell you how to build a basic ter­rar­i­um and where to find more ideas on today’s mod­ern “indoor mini gar­dens.” These are a great choice for a small space like an office or small apart­ment. If you are a real­tor and are look­ing for a great way to dec­o­rate for your Open Hous­es, this is also a great option to help stage a home that is for sale.

Ter­rar­i­ums come in all shapes and sizes today. Pic­tured at left is the clas­sic War­dian case style of ter­rar­i­um. A War­dian case is a glass-enclosed house. They’ve been designed at times to imi­tate famous archi­tec­ture from around the world. Some­times they sit on a table­top and some­times they are free­stand­ing. Pho­to: Amazon.com.

Choosing a Terrarium Container

These con­tain­ers were at my local Home­Goods store in Tor­rance, California.

There are many dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers you can adapt for your mod­ern ter­rar­i­um. You can use any­thing as long as it has clear glass that allows sun­light in and for you to be able to see the plants inside. Think about the size and type of plants you want to dis­play and then choose a case that will work best. Or…if you have a jar or vase that would be large enough to fit a small plant, it’s time to go shop­ping at your local nurs­ery. Here is a break down of some options I found while shop­ping at my local vase sup­ply, Home­Goods store and in my own cupboards!

• A cloche or closed jar will pro­vide the most humid­i­ty, so if you choose this con­tain­er, then choose the humid­i­ty-lov­ing plants to go inside.
• A lantern can be adapt­ed as a fun ter­rar­i­um and can be used for less-humid lov­ing plants if the top is not enclosed.
• A clas­sic closed War­dian case can be used for plants that are pot­ted direct­ly into the bot­tom of the case or it can be used as a mini green­house with plants still in their pots. Keep­ing plants in mini pots allows you to change the plants with the seasons.
• Vas­es, com­potes and tureens have wide open mouths and can be used for more arid-lov­ing plants like succulents.

Humidity-Loving Plants Work Well in Terrariums

Since most ter­rar­i­ums help build up humid­ty inside the con­tain­er, it’s best to use plants that like humid­i­ty. Think about trop­i­cal plants and oth­er plants that like rain like ferns and mosses.

African vio­lets pic­tured here at left, work great in terrariums.

Dos and Don’ts for Creating Terrariums

Lanterns can make a fun choice for cre­at­ing a ter­rar­i­um. Note: If you use some­thing like the tall lanterns in the pho­to at left I found at my local Home­Goods store, be sure to water the gar­den inside a lit­tle more often than if you use a com­plete­ly closed container.

• Do choose plants that like humid­i­ty and shade — Options include African vio­lets, ferns, moss­es, orchids, bego­nias, and pileas.
• Do choose small plants or break up a larg­er plant into small­er plants.
• Do keep soil moist, but not wet. Water just enough to keep the soil moist. The size of the ter­rar­i­um and num­ber of plants will dic­tate how much water you need to use. Also, whether or not the con­tain­er is closed will also be a fac­tor in how often and how much you water.
• Do use acti­vat­ed char­coal (found in aquar­i­um stores or nurs­ery cen­ters) and peb­bles in the base of a soil-filled ter­rar­i­um. This will help keep the soil fresh and cut down on fun­gi inside a ter­rar­i­um. See steps below for how to apply the char­coal to your terrarium.
• Do use gloves when work­ing with the soil and some types of moss. Sphag­num moss can give you a fun­gal infec­tion called Sporotrichum schenkii that affects the skin, so use gloves when work­ing with it. Also, try to make sure you pur­chase moss that is grown in the Unit­ed States only. A good bet is moss grown in Ore­gon. NOTE: It’s also a good idea to use gloves when work­ing with the acti­vat­ed charcoal.
• Don’t use plants that like an arid cli­mate if you are using a closed glass con­tain­er. Plants to avoid include cac­tus, suc­cu­lents, air plants (tilland­sias), herbs and alpines.
• Don’t over­wa­ter! Closed ter­rar­i­ums are meant to be used in order to min­i­mize the need for water since the closed atmos­phere cre­ates its own humid­i­ty. Even a con­tain­er that is open at the top will have some humid­i­ty inside.

How to Create a Terrarium in a Tall Closed Jar

Step 1: Start with a clean con­tain­er and choose plants that wick up mois­ture (like trop­i­cal plants). If you are not sure what to pur­chase, just ask for help at your local gar­den cen­ter. I chose a tall and thin apothe­cary jar since its small pro­file will fit nice­ly into our small home. With 15-month-old twins in the house, I don’t have much counter space these days! For the plants, I chose a tall and skin­ny mini palm and a small low grow­ing pol­ka dot plant that I could break up into small­er plants to sur­round the palm.
Step 2: Gath­er all the sup­plies you’ll need for this project. Con­tain­er, gloves, plants, soil, char­coal, dry paint brush (to clean inside of vase after you’ve added the plants) and a small trow­el or weed­er tool.

Step 3: Put on gloves. Add acti­vat­ed char­coal to the bot­tom of the con­tain­er to cov­er. I was able to pur­chase char­coal at my local gar­den cen­ter. I asked a work­er for help find­ing “acti­vat­ed char­coal” and his reply was, “Do you mean char­coal you put in the bot­tom of a ter­rar­i­um?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, I’ve nev­er heard it called acti­vat­ed char­coal, but there it is.” Turns out, I was stand­ing right in front of it!
Step 4: Mix well-drained soil and with a bit of char­coal and put that on top of the lay­er of char­coal. Remove the plants from their nurs­ery con­tain­ers and care­ful­ly place them into the soil in the con­tain­er. In this exam­ple, I placed the mini palm tree first and then broke up the Pol­ka Dot Plant (Hypoestes phyl­lostachya) into small­er plants and placed them to sur­round the palm. I then added soil around all the plants. One tip from the book The New Ter­rar­i­um: Cre­at­ing Beau­ti­ful Dis­plays for Plants and Nature is to tamp down the soil using a “cork-tipped bar­be­cue skew­er.” I did not need it, but I think that is a great idea!
Step 5: Clean the sides of the con­tain­er. I used a dry paint brush to care­ful­ly brush off any soil that end­ed up on the leaves of my plants and to clean the sides of the vase.
Step 6: Add a lit­tle bit of water to the container.
Step 7: Put the top on and dis­play in your home! Choose a spot that has bright light, but not direct sunlight.


Want to learn more about build­ing all kinds of ter­rar­i­ums? Keep read­ing below to learn about air plants and then check out the three ter­rar­i­um how-to books we review in this mon­th’s newslet­ter, too! They are all excel­lent resources for those of you who want to make your own love­ly indoor mini gar­dens at home. Why not grab a few friends and have a “Ter­rar­i­um Par­ty.” That way, you can split up the larg­er plants you buy and noth­ing will go to waste. Plus, the char­coal bag I bought goes a long way, so this is anoth­er way to share the cost. Grab some wine and appe­tiz­ers and have fun with your lit­tle gardens.

All About Air Plants or Tillandsias and Yes, They Do Flower!

by Kit Wertz

A glass globe vase makes a great home for a cou­ple of tilland­sias nes­tled in moss and it real­ly bright­ens up my office.

Flower Duet’s History with Air Plants

When I men­tioned to Casey that I want­ed to do an arti­cle about air plants and their ris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty, she had a fun­ny sto­ry to tell me about her own rela­tion­ship with the cute lit­tle plants. Casey worked on cruise ships as a ship’s offi­cer for over 12 years and as a junior purs­er on board one of her ships that cruised through The Bahamas and Caribbean, she sold these lit­tle air plants that were glued to refrig­er­a­tor mag­nets. She said that they sold like crazy and the ship made a lot of mon­ey from the sales! Well, it’s fun­ny how some things nev­er go out of style.

What are Air Plants?

Air plants are actu­al­ly called Tilland­sias and these are part of the Bromeli­aceae fam­i­ly more com­mon­ly referred to as Bromeli­ads. They are referred to as air plants, or epi­phytes because they don’t require to be in soil to grow. Most tilland­sias come from Latin Amer­i­ca and grow in arid envi­ron­ments. An exam­ple of Tilland­sia that grows pro­fuse­ly in the Amer­i­can South is Span­ish Moss, Tilland­sia usneoides (oos-nay-oh-EE-dess).

Tilland­sias have exot­ic blooms and are very hardy. Most are xero­phyt­ic which means they like arid cli­mates. This attribute makes them an excel­lent choice for the low-main­te­nance gar­den­er! These plants repro­duce by send­ing out lit­tle babies called “pups” or off­sets. There can be many off­sets on a sin­gle par­ent plant and then they can be divid­ed into indi­vid­ual plants or just left to grow in large clusters.

Where to Buy Tillandsias

We are so for­tu­nate to live very close to a grow­er of these won­der­ful plants. Locat­ed in the heart of Tor­rance, Cal­i­for­nia, Rain­for­est Flo­ra, Inc. has been prop­a­gat­ing and grow­ing tilland­sias since 1976. The own­er, Paul T. Isley, III, is hap­py to share lots of infor­ma­tion on these won­der­ful and unique plants. You can order online at www.RainforestFlora.com or pur­chase direct­ly from the store in Tor­rance. Rain­for­est Flo­ra, unlike any oth­er Tilland­sia sup­pli­er who all rely on imported/collected plants, grows all of its plants in their entire­ty at one of their three Cal­i­for­nia facil­i­ties. This ensures a sus­tain­able prod­uct that is also a hardier plant.

As you can see from the pho­tos below, it’s worth the trip to the nurs­ery to see all the plants on dis­play. There is a large indoor botan­i­cal gar­den with koi pond that is free and open to the pub­lic. All through­out the gar­den are hun­dreds of tilland­sias and bromeli­ads for sale. Many of these are grown from seed and are many decades old!

Getting Tillandsias to Flower

When I went there to do research for this arti­cle, I could not help but pur­chase five dif­fer­ent kinds of tilland­sias. There were so many to choose from and at first glance, they look very sim­i­lar. But, the more you look at each one, you start to notice sub­tle dif­fer­ences. None of the plants I chose is cur­rent­ly flow­er­ing, but I read in Mr. Isley’s book­let Genus Tilland­sia: The World’s Most Unusu­al Air Plants, that I can try to force a flower by putting the plant into a plas­tic bag with a ripe piece of apple for a cou­ple of days. The eth­yl­ene gas from the apple should force a bloom with­in 16 weeks if I’m lucky. It’s fun­ny that the same gas that caus­es cut flow­ers to wilt is just the trick to get a flower to bloom on a tilland­sia! I can’t wait to share that with my flo­ral stu­dents since I am always lec­tur­ing on why you should­n’t mix apples with fresh flo­ral designs if you want the flow­ers to last a long time.

How to Display and Care For Tillandsias

Since these plants don’t require soil, there are innu­mer­able options and ways to dis­play them! Tilland­sias will be hap­py indoors or out­doors. Keep them in bright indi­rect light, espe­cial­ly indoors. Shown here are tilland­sias in a vase (with­out water), hang­ing from alu­minum florist’s wire (we talk about this wire in our April 2010 newslet­ter), in a glass cube vase, and inside a hang­ing teardrop vase that is made espe­cial­ly for air plants!

The tilland­sia above looks like it’s in a vase, but the vase does not have any water in it. It’s an exam­ple of a tru­ly low-main­te­nance flo­ral design!

Accord­ing to Rain­for­est Flo­ra, the most com­mon mis­treat­ment is under water­ing them: “Mist­ing the plants CAN be suf­fi­cient but it can also be OVER-suf­fi­cient or UNDER sufficient.”

The best way to water tilland­sias indoors is to sub­merge them for a twelve hour peri­od in “good” water such as rain water or bot­tled drink­ing water every 10–14 days. When the plants are under water for this length of time they have enough time to com­plete­ly rehy­drate. Be sure to add a tiny amount of fer­tilz­er to the water. Mr. Isley men­tioned to me, “I usu­al­ly tell peo­ple to run the plants under the faucet two or three times a week and then sub­merge them overnight in good water if they notice the leaf edges start­ing to curl up more than normal.”

For more infor­ma­tion on how to do this, watch a video on from Rain­for­est Flo­ra, Inc. on how to care for Tilland­sias.

The hang­ing teardrop glass vase shown above can be pur­chased from ven­dors online. See our tools sec­tion in this newslet­ter to find resources.

FREE Video: How-To Combine Succulents with Fresh Flowers in a Floral Design

Flower Duet Adds More Videos to its YouTube Channel

We con­tin­ue to add more free videos to our YouTube chan­nel. Casey appeared on behalf of Flower Duet for the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 sea­sons of Cre­ative Liv­ing, which airs on PBS sta­tions across the coun­try. We are able to air these seg­ments with the per­mis­sion of Cre­ative Liv­ing via our chan­nel on YouTube!

This mon­th’s video is called How-To Com­bine Suc­cu­lents with Fresh Flow­ers in a Flo­ral Design. In less than ten min­utes, you can learn how which flow­ers pair best with suc­cu­lents and how to get those plants into a flo­ral design!

Sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel: fash­ion­ingflow­ers so you’ll know when we’ve uploaded a new show!

Floral Design Tool: Air Plant and Terrarium Display Vases

We found a lot of places to pur­chase ter­rar­i­um vas­es, con­tain­ers and air plant glass globes online. Some ven­dors car­ry both kinds of containers.

I found many great apothe­cary jars, bell jars and lanterns at my local Home­Goods store. That is where I found the tall jar I used for my step-by-step sto­ry and it cost less than $15!

If you don’t live near a Home­Goods store, there are more online options. Here are a few:

Globes can be found on Amazon.com.Air Plant Hang­ing Glass Globe from Amazon.com
You can pur­chase a vari­ety of air plant vas­es from WestElm.com. Pho­to: WestElm.com.

WindowBox.com car­ries glass air plant globes and War­dian ter­rar­i­um cas­es. Pho­to: WindowBox.com.

UncommonGoods.com car­ries a large selec­tion of air plant globes. Photo:Uncommongoods.com.