Bottle Garden

January 17, 2017 ME

I love plants. I love gardens. There’s just something magical about seeing a green leafy thing happily growing and producing wonderful oxygen for us to breath.

Last week at a local nursery I saw plants being sold in small glass containers and that’s what inspired this particular project. I so happened to have a glass vase that I had made myself on a company outing to a glass factory and there just happened to be some small ferns growing out of a plant pot on my window sill. Perfect!

Dusty vase that will become the bottle garden — Dusty vase that I made myself on a visit to a glass factory.

After cleaning up the vase, I put in some gravel to provide water drainage and then a handful of potting soil.

I made sure the vase was dry on the inside before adding anything for fear of dirt sticking to the sides. Since the vase has some sharp curves I knew it’d be hard to clean the insides so I figured it best not to get it dirty in the first place. I rolled up a piece of scrap paper into a cone to funnel the dirt inside. I intentionally sloped the dirt to provide a bit of visual interest.

Putting in soil and moss for the bottle garden — Putting in soil and moss with tweezers. The neck of the vase was too small, so ended up just stuffing things in with the chopstick seen on the right.

Next to go in was the plants. I had some small ferns pop up in a potted plant on my window sill and there just so happened to be some moss growing on the rooftop of my apartment. I broke the moss into little pieces and stuffed them into the vase to cover the dirt. A chopstick came in handy to arrange everything inside. After pushing in some small ferns in between the pieces of moss, I added some rocks on top.

Adding water to everything with a straw to the bottle garden. — Adding water to everything with a straw. Add just enough to get a little water pooling under the gravel.

After everything was arranged and in place, all that was left to do was add water. This I did by using a straw like a pipette. I added just enough water to have a little bit of it pool at the bottom of the gravel. After an hour, the dry moss started soaking up the water and turned a bright green.

This thing turned out beautifully! It now sits on my desk providing a nice miniature view on nature without having to go outside! My own Zen space in a bottle!