A couple of years ago we started to experiment with small aquatic plants. The feedback has been great. The concept is really about making cute mini aquatic ‘terrariums’ (or really, mini aquariums – without the fish!).

We have used a variety of glassware, from vintage bottles to premium laboratory glassware. All seems to work well and be fairly low maintenance. The hardiest variety would have to be the hair-grass plants.

If you are planning to make one of these yourself, here are a few tips on what worked for us:

– make sure all bottles are very clean. (We washed ours with super-hot water and a little bleach before hand.)
– if you can get it, use aquarium-grade gravel, in a very small size. We have tried both ordinary gravel and aquarium gravel, very small and small, and the very small aquarium gravel was the best and easiest to work with.
– choose the best plants. Talk to the plant person about which are going to survive the best in the type of environment you will be creating. If your plant will be in a lot of light, or not much. If it will have a lot of room in your container, or not much (in which case you might need a slower-growing type of plant). All those types of things.

Happy planting!