Tabletop garden – Black N Matching is not only an easy-to-make tabletop garden, but it is also a garden that is easy to maintain, making it a great gift for any of your self-claimed blackthumb friends.
Here, let me show you how to make this tabletop garden.
In this tabletop garden, I used mini Fittonia, dwarf Neanthe Bella Palm, and Chinese Evergreen. All of these plants can grow well in partial shade, as well as indoor.
Because this is my Mother’s Day present for my mom, I handmade a heart-shaped S and put it in the garden. It is not only my initial, but also my mom’s (Susana), as well as my brother’s (Stephen). If you don’t have a particular design that you want to put in your garden like I did, you can consider using cookie cutters, which make good decorations in your tabletop gardens.
Here are some tabletop gardens that I have used cookie cutters:
Tabletop Garden – After Jurassic
Tabletop Garden – My Star
Tabletop Garden – Double the Love
Chopstick is a common gardening tool for Chinese. I like using a chopstick when I am potting my plants. And in Japanese Garden, Gururaj shares how he uses his pair of chopsticks in his garden. I bet many Japanese gardeners use chopsticks when they are in their gardens as well.
Besides chopstick, my pointed-tip tweezers is another gardening tool that I have found very helpful. In fact, since the objects in my tabletop gardens are very small, for greater precision, I prefer my tweezers over a pair of chopsticks when I am working on my tabletop gardens.
I made this tabletop garden on May 9, a day before Mother’s Day. It looked fine, with only a small part of the “S” being covered by the mini Fittonia. However, on Mother’s Day, which was just a day later, I found the plants had covered almost the whole “S”. This was due to the nature that plants – the tendency of reaching towards the light source.
I got reminded again that, unlike oil painting or sculpture, the matters involving in a tabletop garden is organic and will change along with time and its surrounding environment. And yes, that’s the fun part too! 😉
I purchased several cacti tabletop gardens locally here in Fl. for myself and friends. The pebbles surrounding the plants are “glued” into place and I wondered how to transplant them, in the future, into larger containers without damaging the root systems. Pls. advise re repotting, fertilizers, etc.
Thank you.
They are beautiful and I receive many compliments when friends realize that they are real plants.
M. Watkins
Hi M. Watkins, it is ok to moderately cut the roots when repotting your plants. In fact, it is good to cut away some old, long roots when repotting. This can stimulate the growth of new roots, and improve the plant’s ability to absolve water and fertilizers.