DIY Succulent Gardens or Terrariums

By Jessica

At the moment, I'm sort of obsessed with succelent gardens. I'm sure it's because it reminds me of growing up in Arizona and the little plants are very comforting, to me, in that way -- even the spikey ones. I decided it was high time I had some in the house and after seeing some pop-up on Pinterest, I set to work making a couple of my own.

I found a bunch of posts on the topic all over the internet with slight variations on the theme but in general most had the same major components.

-Sandy or well draining soil (I used palm and cactus soil)

-Rocks or gravel

-Container of some sort

-Succelents of varying sizes and types

-Activated carbon (this one isn't in every post but I did it for my plants)

So this is almost everything laid out on my table, ready to get started. I did have a harder time than I expected locating my succulents and the ones I ended up with aren't exactly what I wanted so in the future I might do it over again/make more.

For the activated carbon, I discovered that it was cheaper to buy a package of three aquarium filters and cut open what I needed than buy it in the bucket.

I also bought both types of gravel I used at Petsmart as well, because I didn't want the huge bag that was avail at my local big box store.

I used the larger stones in the bottom of the vessel for drainage.

Then covered that with one bag/filter's worth of the carbon

And from there it was just a matter of adding the soil and the plants and topping it with the white gravel for a clean look.

One word of caution when using small gravel to top your vessel off: if it's too well packed, water will not be able to get through to the plants and will just run right off. I used a small nail to poke holes down through the gravel layer to help the water get down to the roots.

(Photo from: me)

Comments

[Christina]

love it! I'm totally obsessed with these right now. I was at West Elm last weekend and they had an insane variety of plants- horribly overpriced (like $7.20 for a 2 inch pot) but ones you wont find anywhere else.

[Maria A]

Thanks for the inspiration .....I'm making one this weekend!

[Jen W.]

Cute! I'm obsessed as well. I think I'm going to try this too.