Build a Terrarium - Arranging the Plants

Kacy Paide: Hi, this is Kacy Paide of Small World Terrariums and you are watching making a Terrarium. This clip is going to show you how to design and arrange the plants you have chosen inside the actual glass bowl. So actually what we are going to do is we are going to start with our center piece plant and again this is the tallest one. I have already taken it out of the plastic but since this has pretty tight roots you just want to kind of pick at it gently to loosen them up. Now next, we are going to put in a Begonia which is going to sort of act as a ground cover since it's close to the soil level. For now I am not worrying about getting this perfect, once we pack in the soil at the end they would be in a more permanent place. Take the rabbit's foot fern, which is one of my favorites, drop that in. I will turn this around, then take our photinia and this piece we can actually splay out and this will also serve as a little bit of a ground cover, and I think I am going to move this back, make room for the pink photinia, since it's a little bit taller. Then we will use this ground cover, baby's tears and this will actually spread out quite nicely. These will grow tall too, they won't always be so close to the ground. And again, this is the plant that absolutely has to always stay moist. I might move this later but I am going to take a pinch off of this friendship plant, this type of plant doesn't have to root before you add it, so you can just pinch it on the spot, stick it in somewhere where you need it. A feature closer to the soil again. And I am going to take another half of this pink photinia stick it in there. So see how that looks, we can move this over a little bit.

Now I want to see how close everything comes to the top of the lid. So a little close, it shouldn't hurt the plants but if it does I will just have the owner pinch this piece off because when the plant touches the glass of the terrarium sometimes it can start to die. And if that's the case we will just pinch that off. But for now we are leave it in. From here all we have to do is pack the soil that we have mixed around the plants. Now if you are using a rabbit's foot fern, the beauty of this plant is actually the piece that looks like a rabbit's foot. So if we bury it in the process, pick it out and set it above the soil again. There we have it. In the next clip I am going to show you how to finalize all of these plants, clean them up, get them into shape and add decorative features like rocks and driftwood to a terrarium.