The person who turned me on to terrariums is Cathie Cox, Manager of Horticultural Services at the Civic Garden Centre in Toronto. Cathie has a lot of imagination, and she has ideas for a desert terrarium filled with cactus, or one filled with insect-hungry carnivorous plants. "The scope is limitless," she says, bubbling over with more ideas than I could scribble down in my notebook.
An amateur naturalist named Ward started the whole terrarium craze back in the Victorian era when he discovered a way to transport exotic plants from around the world safely back to England. He hit upon the idea of a glass case that would sustain plant life on the journey, and the "Wardian case" was born - a terrarium by any other name.
Terrariums are easy to build and easy to care for, making them great Christmas gifts. The container or "case" can be as simple as a glass bottle, an aquarium, or an apothecary jar. Or, it can be as elaborate as the leaded glass replicas of Victorian greenhouses that I've seen in shops around town and on the Internet.
Once you've found the perfect container, follow Cathie's instructions for assembling the terrarium:
Ingredients:
Soilless potting mix (or cactus soil if you're building a cactus garden)
Clear glass container (bottle necks should be no smaller than 2 ½")
Selection of slow-growing house plants, watered 24 hours beforehand
Assembly:
1. Using a paper funnel, add soil to the glass container, filling it to about ¼ to 1/3
2. Dig planting holes in the soil using a spoon. (If your container has a narrow opening, Cathie advises attaching the spoon to a long stick and using this as a mini-spade.)
3. Spread out the plant's roots and drop them into the planting holes.
4. Mist the plants with a household spray bottle or watering can fitted with a very fine rose.
That's all there is to it! Your terrarium should be self-sustaining for about a year - it doesn't even need to be watered! After a year, if the plants seem to need it, Cathie recommends feeding them once a month from March to September with a fish-based fertilizer applied at quarter strength. A cactus terrarium may need a full strength application once in April, then again in another six weeks.
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