Greening Austin Daily

Making a Terrarium in a Reused Container

10th May, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments

I’ve wanted to try making a terrarium for awhile and last week I finally had the time. It’s a great way to reuse an old container and make something cool you can watch grow.

It’s pretty straightforward.  I just used an old spaghetti sauce container and picked up a couple of tiny succulents at Lowes. I put down a layer of pebbles first – you need this in your terrarium because there’s no drainage, so the pebbles allow someplace for any extra water to go so the plant roots aren’t sitting in water.  Then I added a layer of dirt, and carefully lowered and planted the succulents.  You want to try and plant them without getting dirt all over the glass of the jar, because it’s hard to clean the inside of the glass once all of the plants are in – mine was pretty crowded when I finished.  To get rid of any extra dirt that had gotten on the glass, and any dirt stuck in the leaves of my succulents, I used my finger, but you could use a q-tip   

a close up

Traditionally, a terrarium is within a closed container, but I read online that succulents would only do well in an open air container so I didn’t save the jar’s lid.  It was a fun, easy way to reuse an old jar!

If you want to know everything you would ever want to know about terrariums, check out the Fern and Mossery.

And look at these cool terrariums using recycled glass from urban materials.