Category Archives: Tillandsias

Terrarium: How To

Recently, I accepted the challenge of planting a terrarium for another member of AHA… and I just love the container! With the recessed area in the middle of the stone-like pottery base, it’s obviously made to be a terrarium. Great design – it’s stable and will not tip over. So this is how it came together… First I filled up the recessed area with 3/8 inch gravel mixed with some activated filter carbon (to filter the air and water). Then added a piece of fiberglass screen cut to fit, (or you could use moss), to keep the soil above the gravel. Gathered together some ferns, mosses, pretty rocks, and one of the ceramic frogs that our friend Marcella makes. So perfect for this piece!  I mixed and moistened approximate equal parts peat moss and potting soil and shoveled in a few inches. Then carefully added the plants and arranged the rocks and frog.008_1As an experiment, I added a small tillandsia (air plant) and bromeliad…  just to see if they will thrive in this new little ecosystem.

Old fan blades and blooms

Mounted a couple of salvaged fan blades onto wood slabs that needed a little ‘something’. They fit in nicely on the greenhouse courtyard in the shade. The intent was to mount staghorn ferns on the slabs. But the wire guards are perfect for holding tillandsias (air plants).  Just in time for the first Epipyllum (orchid cactus) bloom of the season… just beautiful!