A detailed guide to making bottle gardens, teaching you to easily create a beautiful bottle garden

A bottle garden is a special decorative piece made by planting small plants in a transparent glass bottle or transparent plastic container.

For planting, choose small plants and fewer varieties; simplicity is preferred over complexity. Generally, you can use small plants such as ferns (Pteridophytes), Fittonia, evergreen vines or pearl grass. In addition, plants such as maidenhair fern, Peperomia, Cyrtomium, Saxifraga and Peperomia can also be used.

The growing medium for a bottle garden should use materials with strong air permeability and water retention, such as coal cinder, vermiculite, LECA and perlite. The growing medium placed in a bottle garden is generally divided into three layers: first place a layer of pebbles or perlite at the bottom to facilitate drainage; fill the middle with a layer of charcoal particles to filter impurities; the top soil layer can be prepared as a growing medium in the ratio of 1 part sandy soil, 1 part humus soil and 1 part garden soil. The total height of the layers should not exceed 1/4 of the bottle's height. When planting, use tweezers to gently place the plants one by one into the container's growing medium, then cover the roots of the plants with a thin layer of soil.

After planting, pour water along the wall of the container, taking care not to disturb the plants, and cover the bottle with its lid after watering. Avoid strong light for the first few days, and only move it into the sunlight once the plants have adapted to the environment inside the bottle.

It is best to open the bottle lid once a week to check the soil moisture. If the water droplets on the bottle wall have not dissipated for a long time, it indicates that the humidity inside the container is too high, and the lid needs to be opened to release some water vapor before covering it again. For "bottle garden plants", "water, light and temperature" are the three basic elements of care. Plants grown in open bottle gardens require relatively more water, about once a week, while closed bottle gardens should be watered as needed according to their specific growth conditions. After planting, a bottle garden should not be placed in a place with strong sunlight for a long time.