Cultivating my Green Thumb: Making a Terrarium!

I’ve never had green fingers.

I wanted to plant little pots of vegetables and flowers when I was a kid. I didn’t even have the opportunity to kill the plants. They never even grew! Even after my constant watering, not one stalk peeked out of the soil.

Now, more than a decade later, after seeing all the pretty terrariums in stores and online, it was time to try my (non-green) hand at planting again!

We went down to the Make Your Own studio after booking our slots on their website. It was one of the more affordable workshops I managed to find online! Plus, the photos of their terrariums looked so pretty!

Our workshop instructor was Yi Ting, and she started the session with a short and sweet introduction to making and maintaining a terrarium. Then it was time to get to work!

I chose to make a closed terrarium. So I had to choose the leafy plants (the name of which slipped my mind) over the cactus. Which might have been the wrong decision, but more on that later!

After flattening the base, moss and soil in the glass container, it was time to get our hands dirty. We pulled our chosen plants out of their little pots and scrapped as much of the soil off their roots as possible. I managed to pull off a few roots, which isn’t the best thing to do.

We plopped the rooted plants into the soil in the container and closed the soil over their roots. And here comes my favourite part – the decorating! We could each choose 2 packets of coloured stones and 1 decorative item. But since we went in a group of 4, we could share all the different colours amongst ourselves. Whoopee!

And 1 decorative item was not enough lar. You will be so tempted to buy extras! I bought 3 more, as a matter of fact. But at $1 each, I only had to top up $3 so no big issue there.

Tadah!

Say hello to my awesome terrarium!

That was how it looked on the day I made it. I am sad to report that a few days later, I realised all the leaves of one plant had fallen off. When I was decorating my terrarium, I’d accidentally pulled that plant upwards by accident. Apparently, I didn’t plot it back properly like I thought I did. So my plant is leafless now and my terrarium is in a sad state.

And why do my other 2 plants look like they are withering too?

If you’re as plant-clueless as me, I advise you to go with the open terrarium and the cactus instead. It’s much harder to kill a cactus.

Make Your Own is located at Blk 4 Upper Aljunied Lane #01-06 S(360004). We joined the fun 2-hour workshop class with a total of 10 people and paid $28 each. The glass container, plants, soil, 2 packets of coloured stones, and 1 decorative item was included in the price, as well as all the other tools needed to make your terrarium. You can add more decorative items at an extra cost from $1 each onwards.