My Attempt at Going Green

I have been seeing beautiful glass terrariums all over Pinterest lately and to be honest- I was a little intimated. I checked out various instructions for the DIY indoor planting craze and I was a little overwhelmed- maybe it was the unsettling number of moss species that you could go with (who knew there was more than one?!).

But when I found a glass trifle dish at my local thrift shop for $4 I knew I wanted to give it a try. So I gathered my supplies and dove in.

I purchased three kinds of plants: a Basil Boxwood (smells really yummy), Alyssum and Cosmos. Honestly, I had no idea which ones to buy- I just found ones that would look pretty together and had different textures. So mark my words- these are likely to be dead in a week. But worth a shot, right?!

OK this part is where I got ghetto- I needed some rocks for the bottom of the glass dish to allow for drainage of the water and I was not about to pay for them. So I wandered the neighborhood and felt like a total clepto as I shoveled half my neighbors driveway into a zip lock baggy. Then ran...

*In retrospect, I should put 2" of rock at the bottom as opposed to 1" because its looks little like a "dirt cake" according to my husband. Lesson learned- go with 2".

OK here is ghetto part #2. I read that you need to have some sort of material that will help adsorb the water so that it does not get all stinky and many sites suggested a few pieces of charcoal or stuff called Perilite. The guy at the hardware store explained that this is a Styrofoam like material that helps distribute and absorb the water.

So I guess buying one or two pieces of charcoal or like a cup of Perilite is not common practice because they only had 10 lb. bags of the stuff- no thank you! So, me being the genius (not!) that I am pick up a Styrofoam cup that I found lying in the road and thought, "Totally the same thing, right?!" Yes, it was used- and not by me- I warned you this was ghetto...don't judge...

 With the base layer complete, I put in a thin layer of the potting soil, wiggled the plants out of their pots and arranged them into a grouping that I liked. Once that was set, I filled in with the potting soil and made sure they were nice and snug.

*Sorry, not too many pics of this step because my hands were covered in dirt and I didn't want to ruin my cam cam. *

I shredded the pot that the purple plant came in because it was a grassy like texture and blanketed it on the to cover some of the dirt.

With that I was pretty much finished, except I did add a white ribbon around the base to break up a little bit of the view of the dirt.

Viola!

As expected- it took about 30 seconds before this happened :

Oh geez... Well, if these plants did actually have a chance of survival with my ghetto planting then they will ultimately succumb to death by way of kitten attack.
* I did make sure that these were pet friendly plants- gotta be careful! *

Anyone else try their hand at live plants recently? Did yours live???

 

XOXO Katie

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