How to make a florarium with your own hands: step-by-step instructions
Miniature plant arrangements in transparent vessels have become a popular trend in floristry, which is confirmed by many videos on the Internet on this topic. We decided to conduct a master class for beginning florists on the topic: how to make a florarium with your own hands. Our experts will tell you about all the intricacies of creating unique compositions from home flowers.
With the help of our instructions, you can go through the entire fascinating path step by step: from choosing and purchasing indoor plants to placing a finished decorative object in the setting of an apartment, house, or office. Your original mini-kindergarten will be an exclusive addition or accent to the design of any room.
The content of the article
Advantages of florariums made from plants
How to choose suitable indoor plants for a florarium
How to assemble a florarium from house plants
DIY florariums: brief step-by-step instructions
Caring for a florarium made from domestic plants
Advantages of florariums made from plants
A miniature garden in an unusually shaped container can replace the usual potted arrangements. Instead of a boring approach to landscaping a space, bright, stylish compositions are used - fashionable and interesting.
Making a florarium in a container of any size is absolutely easy. It has many advantages compared to flowers in pots placed on windowsills.
Advantages of florariums:
modern, unusual looking;
exclusive decorative element;
aesthetically attractive;
compact, does not take up much space;
saves time and money in maintenance - just clean the glass;
does not accumulate dust and dirt;
safe even for allergy sufferers;
does not require frequent watering.
Creating small ecosystem worlds inside florariums
The master’s imagination is inexhaustible, and a mini-garden in glass allows you to fully express it. Each composition is an imitation of a corner of nature, a climate zone, or a specific region. By making a florarium with succulents with your own hands, you will create a desert, semi-desert landscape on regular soil, with cacti and stone roses. The vessel should be wide, flat, and as open as possible.
To recreate a tropical climate, it is better to take an elongated, tapered vase. It will accommodate plants that love humidity. Any container, for example, a glass filled with stones, can help recreate the mountain landscape. They will play the role of rocks to which the flowers cling. Florariums with imitation of ponds, lunar landscapes and many others, prompted by the imagination of the master, look very beautiful.
How to choose suitable indoor plants for a florarium
To make a mini-greenhouse look aesthetically pleasing and organic, you need to choose the right combinations of home colors. It is important that their shades, sizes and textures are in harmony with each other. Plants must be slow growing, small, viable in the microclimate created for them.
Types of florariums:
Closed - hermetically sealed, without the possibility of watering and ventilation.
Open - with an influx of fresh air, free access, convenient watering.
Dry and wet - according to the demands of the “residents” of the container for watering.
For tabletop, floor, wall and hanging placement.
Popular plants for florariums
For placement in closed containers, specimens that can remain in a created sealed microenvironment for a long time without watering or ventilation are suitable: aspleniums, lithops, small-leaved begonias, orchids. They need light soil and enclosed space. Such compositions look impressive with internal lighting.
Houseplants that need fresh air thrive in an open container. In a dry florarium you can place unpretentious cacti, succulents, and fat plants. Astrophytums, cerochlamis, echeveria, rebuntia, and echinopsis will look good and live comfortably in it. To imitate a rocky landscape, you can use aloe and stone rose.
Florarium with succulents
A damp florarium will be an ideal place to place fittonias, epipremnums, tradescantia, flycatchers, ivy, and dionia. They all need a warm, moisture-rich climate. From ferns it is better to choose pteris, multirow, asplenium, and from mosses - sphagnum in any color, from light green to red-brown.
From flowering plants, choose Saintpaulia, some varieties of cyclamen, guzmania, and azalea. Decorative deciduous representatives of the flora look very impressive in miniature gardens: calathea, crotons, alocasia, cryptanthus, small philodendrons, asparagus, marsh calamus.
How to assemble a florarium from house plants
Creating a plant composition from scrap materials is not at all difficult. You will not need large time and financial investments. The main thing is to have an idea and the desire to implement it. Let's determine what we need to make a florarium.
You can create a miniature home greenhouse in a glass container of any size and shape. The arrangement of the composition can be vertical or horizontal.
The type of florarium also depends on the capacity:
Bottle-type – vessels with a narrowed neck are used (bottles, vases, laboratory glassware, incandescent lamp bulbs.
Aquarium - in the form of geometric shapes (balls, rectangles, pyramids, cylinders, truncated cones, polygons, cubes).
Mini-gardens – miniature containers up to 250 ml (glasses, small jars, glasses)
Required materials and tools
To make a florarium with your own hands, a small number of components is enough for beginners. First of all, choose a glass vessel of the desired size and shape. Select plants and special soil for them - unpretentious succulents and cacti are great for beginners. Buy drainage - expanded clay, ceramics. Prepare absorbents - charcoal or activated carbon. To decorate your florarium aesthetically and originally, you will need any decor that your imagination tells you.
Set of tools:
mini-spatula or tablespoon for adding soil;
tweezers for straightening small sprouts and roots when planting, and placing decorative elements;
cork from a wine bottle - it is convenient to compact the soil around plants;
pipette (syringe) – for watering home flowers in the composition;
gloves to protect hands.
Rules for placing plants inside the florarium
To create a harmonious composition, it is necessary to plant species of different shades and shapes in one container. It is better for a novice gardener to plant no more than 3-4 varieties of flowers. Draw a design of plant combinations on a sheet of paper in advance. Everyone should have enough free space, lighting and moisture.
For comfortable coexistence, you need to select green neighbors taking into account the same living conditions:
According to the watering regime and general humidity: lovers of moisture and spraying or residents of dry deserts and mountains.
According to the temperature regime - winter and summer.
On the ground. Slightly acidic soil is for violets, bromeliads, mosses and ferns, loose soil with good drainage is for succulents and epiphytes, sandy soil is for cacti. When using plants with different preferences in the soil mixture, you can plant them in separate small pots, masking them with decor.
According to lighting requirements. If only light-loving specimens are used, they will need to be placed in the light and the florarium should be rotated regularly. You can combine unpretentious species with flowers that love light, or create a composition of shade-tolerant, shade-loving ones.
DIY florariums: brief step-by-step instructions
Prepare a transparent glass container. For beginners, the easiest option is a small round or rectangular aquarium. Wash and dry it thoroughly. Thoroughly treat the inner surface for disinfection with alcohol or chlorhexidine gluconate.
At the bottom of the vessel, place a layer of drainage - natural or decorative expanded clay, crushed fragments of ceramic dishes, colored quartz sand of 1-3 different shades. In a deep dish it should occupy 1/3-1/2 of the height, in a flat one - 1-2 cm. Place a little absorbent (activated or charcoal) on it.
Choose ready-made soil in accordance with the needs of the plants you are using to create a florarium. Plant flowers in pots or by transferring them to the soil mixture.
Compact the soil a little, water it, cover it with live, stabilized or artificial moss.
Make the decoration from colored sand, pebbles, pebbles, and shells.
Install decor in the form of houses, animal figurines, beads, mini-toys, and implement original ideas.
Caring for a florarium made from domestic plants
Watering
It is extremely important to maintain an optimal level of humidity inside the florarium. The “desert” is watered every 10-15 days using a special watering can or syringe. “Tropics” - weekly in summer and monthly in winter, supplemented by spraying. It is convenient to determine the need for watering by the presence of condensation on the inside of the glass container. If there is no moisture on it, then it is time to water the garden.
Lighting
The location for installing the microgarden should be such that all its inhabitants receive enough diffused daylight without direct sunlight. If there is insufficient lighting, you can use a fluorescent lamp. The best option is the western or eastern side of the house.
Temperature
Select the temperature depending on the needs of the plants. It must be taken into account that glass provides thermal insulation. Make sure that the microgreenhouse is located at a distance from heating devices, drafts, and air conditioning.
Fertilizers
Flowers in a florarium need feeding if the color of the leaves begins to fade or turn yellow. Complex fertilizers are diluted in water and carefully, little by little, injected with a syringe into the soil under the plants.
A florarium is a wonderful opportunity to grow a whole garden of exotic plants in a small container. This is a beautiful composition of home flowers and decor - an unusual ecosystem in miniature. It can decorate the most boring minimalist interior, brings a feeling of calm, harmony, comfort, does not require complex care, and is pleasing to the eye.
