Creating a stylish indoor garden

I am a bit of a terrarium-aholic.

Over the past couple of years I have been slowly accumulating them in various shapes and sizes… sneaking them into the house when my other half wasn’t looking and pretending I’d had it for years when it was finally spotted on a book shelf 🙂

My ever-expanding terrarium collection

I do love how you can store anything in them; jewellery, trinkets & mementos, and of course plants.  These days you can’t move for succulents, cacti’s and tropical palm prints, plants and accessories, and thankfully for those of us who are self-confessed plant serial-killers you can now buy some very authentic artificial plants too (yay).

But you don’t have to jump on the terrarium band wagon to have an indoor garden… why not try these affordable yet stylish alternatives that you can make yourself.

Quirky alternate planters

It’s not just terrariums you can use as planters in your home.  With the increased popularity of upcycling and repurposing old unwanted household items, you can turn pretty much anything into a mini indoor garden.

clockwise from top-left: glass tumbler mini garden / copper-sprayed milk bottles / tea cup terrarium / decorative foliage baubles

Old mismatched glassware, tea cups and bottles, are all ideal and can be customised with spray or porcelain paint & pens to compliment your interior décor.  They can also be fun and playful, like these cute face planters made from egg cups.

These egg cup face planters are so easy to make – check out the tutorial

If you have some broken crockery, don’t throw it away!  Make a feature of the cracks by adding gold mica powder to some ceramic epoxy to repair the item and use it as a planter instead.

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial

Decorative plant pots

Peach and orange coloured home wares are back in a big way this year, making the humble terracotta plant pot ideal for your indoor garden.

You can get terracotta pots in a whole host of different shapes and size, but I prefer the classic shape with slopping edges and a rimmed top.  This style is timeless and looks great whether you decide to leave it plain or decorate it in pastel, bright or metallic shades.  I’ll be stealing this idea and adding gold leaf to my pots 🙂

Even a basic terracotta plant pot can be made beautiful with some rustic glam touches – here’s a simple tutorial

If you are looking for a more contemporary look, a monochrome colour scheme with some metallic accents looks fresh and quirky, and again is easily achieved by masking off the areas you want to paint first.

Monochrome & gold plant pot tutorial / Dip-dyed pot how-to

Or go for a more Mediterranean look with these simple dip-dyed pots – just dip them in the dye mixture one layer at a time so the colour gets darker towards the bottom of the pot.  I’ll be making a few of these for my beach-themed conservatory this spring.

Pun-Pots

These fantastically funny plant pots are available on etsy.com

Whilst researching the makeover tutorials in this blog post, I came across this etsy store that added cool puns to their plant pots, and I just had to include a link to them!  Quotes in their range include “Say Aloe to my Little Friend” and “Sweet Chive of Mine”.

If you can’t grow it, fake it

When making your indoor garden, first and foremost you have to pick your plants 🙂

Thankfully for those of us who cannot keep plants to save our lives, there are some amazing faux plants available now, and they are much better looking than they were 20 years ago.  The species of plants you can buy now is also much more varied and not restricted to just flowers.  I must admit I’m more a fan of lush green plants over flowers in the house (though I wouldn’t say no to being gifted a bouquet every now and then).

The range of artificial plants and flowers from Ikea are brilliant & start from only 80p

I have invested in some new live plants for my window sills, but I’ll be picking up a few artificial ones too for the darker corners of my house where real plants would perish.

They will certainly help freshen the house up… and I think they will start to replace my current candle addiction!

Now for a little Netflix and Dill 🙂