Plants are the new desk-top punch bags.
Orchids and sub-tropical plants are the latest squeezy stress brains, fidget worms and plasma balls. Terries are the new Newton’s cradles and Zen stacking stones.
And the most modern of anti-stress Executive Toys. Look after a Boston or Asparagus Fern and you look after your mental health.
Indoor gardening is the latest stress aid.
My latest new best friend is called Terry. He shares my study. My wife is jealous of our relationship. She says I dote on him and I’m forever saying things like, “I’m off to see how Terry is” and “I have to check on Tel and see how he is and whether he needs anything to drink.”
Then, disappearing for hours on end.
This is because I have created my own private, self-sustaining eco-sphere upstairs. My own mini-Eden Project. This has coincided with my wife complaining about the sudden disappearance of her favourite long-handled salad spoons and tweezers and the equally mysterious depletion of her cotton wool pads.
Discovering an inordinate of expandable coir compost in my trouser pockets, she even accused me of growing my own toupee. Fearing acute male menopause, she anxiously consulted friends when I asked for pebbles, activated charcoal and some sphagnum moss for my birthday.
She also became concerned when I started staring at the goldfish bowl in a strange way.
My life has changed since I built myself a terrarium and started tending my own open and sealed bottled garden. I have developed a morbid interest in pea gravel and stunted asparagus.
Terrariums were invented by a London doctor, entomologist and fern collector named Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. They were originally called Wardian cases and used to transport exotic plants from the other side of the world.
Ward (1791-1868) struggled to grow his ferns in the sooty East End and in 1829, after putting the pupa of a sphinx moth in a sealed glass bottle so that he could observe its metamorphosis, he noticed the water from the leaf mould condense on the jar’s sides and then when temperatures dropped run back down to the mould, creating a mini ecosystem in which a seedling fern grew and thrived. He hoped his cases might be a way for many to grow vegetables in polluted cities.
Kew Gardens used them. The banana from which the seedless Cavendish banana was developed came to Chatsworth in a Wardian case. Scottish botanist Robert Fortune used Wardian cases to smuggle more than 20,000 Camellia sinensis plants out of China to establish tea plantations in India. Sir Clements Markham also used them to bring cinchona officinalis (quinine) shrubs out of South America.
Now, everyone from Waitrose Garden, Dunelm and The Urban Botanist based in Knutsford, Cheshire sells them in pre-assembled and shippable, 3 to 15 litre jars, Erlenmeyer laboratory flasks, bell jar cloches, enclosed domes, teardrops, pyramids and even miniature green houses.
In a terrarium, plants and the soil release water vapour which condenses into water droplets as it touches the glass, which runs down into the soil to begin the process all over again. Maintenance-wise, you’ll only need to open the lid every now and then to allow in some fresh air.
You can grow subtropical plants like Streptocarpus ‘Polka-Dot Purple’, Geranium robertianum and pin cushion moss like Leucobryum glaucoma, lady’s slipper orchid, Paphiopedilum sukhakulii x charlesworthii, a young Dryopteris filix-mas.
Plants shorter than 6 inches are preferable. Watermelon peperonia, petite ferns like Fluffy Ruffles, low-growing mosaic plants (also known as fittonia, nerve plant and painted net leaf. Thimble cactus, cinnamon cactus and rainbow pincushion cactus, miniature orchids such as Phalaenopsis moth orchid, Angraecum and Lepanthes.
“Maintaining a terrarium is no different than looking after houseplants.”
Says Canterbury’s Matt Andrews, owner of The Art of Succulents, who is an authority on “terries”. The former Action Man designer, who studied Industrial Design at Northumbria University, and whose first job was as a toy designer for Hasbro, builds jungles and tropical rainforests, not just in his home county but all around the country. He is also engaged in re-foresting Britain. Indoors.
The Art of Succulents specialises in closed and open terrariums.
Matt’s father, Phil, collects cacti and has 1000 specimens. When he was six, Matt sat on one of them and it left a deep-seated impression. Both parents shared the tweezers to remove the painful needles.
Andrews adds:
“We are an online store selling terrariums in kit format. From trendy geometric designs to traditional Victorian style closed ecosystem, we offer terrariums for forest plants and air plants. As well as cacti.”
Whilst most of the plants are grown by specialists in the Netherlands, a more recent customer base has been the corporate market.
“Terrarium building has become a popular team building activity.”
Everyone should have a Terry in their life. And who hasn’t ever wanted a mother-in-law’s tongue soundproofed and caged?
Author Bio:
Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, food and drink work appear worldwide, and he has been published in over 800 titles.
Photographs courtesy of The Urban Botanist and The Art of Succulents
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