How to Build a Terrarium

Kacy Paide: Hi, my name is Kacy Paide of Small World Terrariums and today I am going to be teaching you how to make your very own Terrariums step by step. We are going to start with layering the soil, putting in the fabric, putting in the charcoal and then selecting the plants, arranging the plants, putting in final finishing touches such as stones and driftwood in the terrarium. Then the last step I am going to do is teach you how to care for your Terrarium once you have one. So there are a number of ingredients needed to make a Terrarium. It can be a little bit of a process but once you have everything on the table in front of you things go pretty quickly. So when you are just starting out it's a little bit of a scavenger hunt to go around town and find everything here. But I am going to leave you with a list of exactly what you need. Of course you are going to need a piece of glass, basically anything that holds moisture. Start with soil of course, gardening charcoal. I used just aquarium gravel from a pet shop to put into the bottom for drainage. I mix the soil and the water and the charcoal in a bowl like this, I will show you later how to do that. Horticultural fabric which you can buy, it looks like this and if you can't find horticultural fabric, you can also use an old screen. Newspaper to cover the surface you are working on. Decorative stones, I love using driftwood, it's just another element. Actually serrated knife which you don't have to have but I will show you later that there are some plants that are easier to break up with the knife than with your hands. Water, of course.

I will show you what this chopstick is used for, a rag small torn off piece of paper towel works just fine and a non toxic glass cleaner, and plants, but not any plants. All of these plants here require the same level of light, the same amount of water. So you just have to make sure that they all can play friendly together. If you are not sure you can just ask somebody in the gardening shop or read the labels very carefully. All of these happen to be moisture loving plants. I have been doing this for about a year and a half now and when I first started I was just curious and to be honest with you I actually did kill a lot of plants in the process. There wasn't a lot of information out there on the Internet, there was a little bit but nothing with as much detail that I am going to give you today. So I am just going to teach you everything I have learned about terrariums through trial and error. So you don't have to go through the growing pains that I did. Now sometimes it can take a little bit of time in the beginning to get comfortable with plants and which ones again can live friendly together. But aside from that with everything you have here and with all the instruction I am about to give you, you will know exactly what to do every step of the way. So with that let's get started building our terrarium.