How to plant a Bottle Garden
Have you always wanted a garden but felt your home was too small? City dwellers with green thumbs find the lack of space restricts their plans for a garden. But there are ways to add greenery to your home and living area without taking up much space. What about planting a bottle garden?
A bottle garden or terrarium is easy to create and refreshes any home by making it look fresh, green, and vibrant. The trick is to know which plants to pick and how to maintain them. You need small plans that thrive in similar growing conditions, usually either damp shade or drought.
You can plant a bottle garden in basically any glass vessel, though closed ones are best for moisture loving plants and open ones best for plants used to drier conditions.Search in charity shops, garden centers, your kitchen cupboard or on the internet for something that appeals. It’s always a good idea to store wine bottles or glass bottles so you can re-use and re-purpose them into something different.
A Terrarium, Bottle Garden, or Wardian Case are all the same thing in that each contains and supports a miniature ecosystem of plants. Originally they were used to transport plants from their native countries to other countries where ordinarily they would not be able to survive in the new conditions. As weather conditions, space, and living areas became a factor, many people decided to use these terrariums to grow their gardens and plants. These casings make plants and gardens grow even in unfavorable conditions, for example, the Victorians could now grow ferns despite their homes being filled with poisonous fumes which would normally kill these types of plants.
Bottle Gardens are used in schools in order to study miniature ecosystems within a classroom. They are also used as a form of interior decoration with the containers often being as interesting as the plants grown within. Bottle gardens are also a popular gift as they require little to no space and minimum maintenance. Let’s find out how to plant a bottle garden.
Most probably you will be starting with a brand new or very old Wardian case, bottle, carboy, or terrarium. If your bottle or casing is old, please clean it properly and extensively. This is to ensure a supportive and clean environment for the plants and to avoid dust and disease. A dusty outside will reduce the amount of light that reaches inside, and a dirty interior will do the same as well as encourage other damaging factors. Bottle gardens are focal pieces in many homes so having an attractive exterior helps.
Once cleaned and dry you’re ready to go. The container which will house the plants needs to be set up ready and to do this you need to create two layers within the base of the container. The first layer should be of a very porous material to help with drainage and prevent fungal attacks caused by excess moisture. You can use material such as gravel, pebbles, or sand. If you wish you can also add a thin layer of activated charcoal at this point. The charcoal helps to reduce any smell caused by decomposition within the container later on. The second layer is the growing medium, i.e. what the plant roots will grow into and use to support themselves such as soil compost. It needs to be quite a thick layer and certainly several times as much as the first porous layer.
The whole point of a Bottle Garden is the plants. Terrariums allow you to grow plants which require a high degree of humidity therefore your choice of potential inhabitants is huge although you must discount any houseplants which produce flowers. This is because flowers do not tend to do well in very moisture-rich atmospheres and will rot easily. You can research online, check on forums, or talk to a gardener before you decide on which plants to select. There are many suitable candidates for your miniature garden but you still need to give it a little thought first. To start with, think about the look you want to end up with, are you perhaps looking for a variety of color with many different leaf shapes to create a bold contrast? Do you want a consistent height level so everything grows to roughly the same size? Or are you looking for visual structure in which case you would need some taller plants as well as some shorter ones?
Your chosen plants need to be reasonably slow growing so as not to take over the others, they will all need similar light and water requirements. For example, you don’t want a traditional type of cactus mixed with moisture-loving plants such as a Peace Lily. If you did this, the cactus would demand drier conditions than the Peace Lilly could live with, and one of them will die as their needs cannot be balanced.
The next step is planting up. It is one of the most difficult steps as you need the right opening to ensure the plants fit. If the neck is large enough for you to get at least one of your hands inside, things are easy as you just need to carefully put one plant in at a time and then bury the root ball into the layer of compost you added previously. Narrow openings which do not allow the use of your hands within can complicate the process. You will need to revert to long-handled spoons, long chopsticks, or something similar, to enable you to dig out a small trench and then to help you lower the plants into the newly created hole.
The final thing to do in terms of the preparation is to water. Be very careful during this step. You do not want to overdo it. When you put water into a bottle like this, you have to ensure it goes to the soil and doesn’t just drip down the sides.
