Hi, I’m Casey Patty of Small World Terrariums and this is how to make a terrarium.

This next clip is going to be the fun part. This is adding the actual plants, so first and foremost before you collect all of your plants, you have to make sure they all require the same care. And if you can’t tell on your own by the tag in the store then just ask somebody who works in the garden shop. They can usually can actually tell you specifically which plants thrive in terrariums. You can pick up two plants and ask if they are going to be compatible together in a container.

So one thing that I like to do is I like to actually take large clusters of plants like this and break it out. Once I break this out, you’ll see that I can actually probably get three or four small plants out of here. So you actually could do a terrarium that aren’t moisture loving but again because there is no drainage and on this one especially because there is a lid. Just buy the design of it, it’s going to be moist, so every plant you see here is a moisture loving plant.

Now, in almost every terrarium I make I have a fern. Fern loves moisture. This specifically is a rabbit’s foot fern; I found that it’s virtually kill proof. This is in the petunia family; it’s a pink or red petunia. Cousin to this one, which is a different shade of pink and you, can also get a petunia, which is white and green instead. This two I’ve also learned again through trial and error are virtually kill proof. This is something called a friendship plant. I like it bringing this one in because it’s a dark color. Design wise it’s nice to have more than one colored plant. I noticed that if every plant in the terrarium is green, it can actually start to look a little bit weedy. So you want a good mix of green and something bright and light and dark and you actually want low plants, which will cover the soil a little bit, and something high to fill out the rest of the space. So for groundcovers were going to use babies tears. This is also an excellent plant but if you have a terrarium with babies tears, you have to make sure its moist 100% of the time otherwise this one will die on the spot. But in a lidded terrarium, it’s always going to be moist.

This is a begonia that I’m going to use, this is also is low to the ground and this plant here is going to be our centerpiece. Its going to add height and actually come up to the top of the lid and this two is a rabbit’s foot fern. So what I’m going to do next is show you how I break up these larger plants and actually get smaller plants. In the beginning, I was actually buying a lot of small plants and only as in small plants until I can admire. You can get a full sized plant, break it down and make your own minis. So next I’m going to show you how to take a large plant and make it small, so right here we have the three plants that were going to be breaking up and cutting down to size. Let me show you first of all how I break out your petunia.

Just kind of squeeze it in the pot, loosen up the soil. Usually the roots are on something like this are pretty loose. Just kind of massage the soil, sort of break it up, just kind of massage the soil. You can see these roots aren’t too tight and it pretty much on its own is going to break exactly where you want it. So from this plant we now have three minis. Let’s set one of this aside that were going to use. Place this back in here, alter we’ll pack it with soil just to keep it moist and its ready for next time. Now in order to break up baby’s tears, we actually have to use a knife, which doesn’t look as friendly, but serrated knife is how you actually take exactly the size you want. Just do this really slow and you won’t rip too many leaves. We made that in more of this later but for now were going to set this amount inside and again place it back in, pack more soil in later, keep it moist.

And now to the larger petunia, same thing, actually for this one I’m going to see if it’s loose enough for me to actually pick one out. So we can keep the others intact. Now this one is ready but I think this might be too big for what were doing, so I’m going to go for this one. And again later as I’m working, I might want to take more from this. It’s also important to know that if you want to use a petunia or any other plant close to the soil. You can actually pinch it off right above a piece of growth like this. Pinch off the bottom leaves, set it in water and in the next couple of weeks all of this will start to root. Once you see small little roots, you can add this to terrarium, so instead of having a tall petunia you can actually use this type of plant as a ground cover. Stick these roots in soil and it will be right up against the soil.

So in the next clip, were going to take all this plants that we’ve been breaking apart and actually arrange them, set them inside of the bowl.