Maybe you don’t have the space for a garden or perhaps you want to step up your pot plant game. The good news is that urban gardening can be super simple and terrariums can be a wonderful and rewarding project, breathing life into your home.

Step 1: Grab Supplies

For the plants, succulents are preferred because they don't grow to crowd the container, but any plant will work if treated right. My plants were randomly chosen from the garden, but can be easily found and purchased.

Things you’ll need:

Container
Plants
Moss
Pebbles
Horticultural charcoal
Spoon
Soil
Spray bottle

For my container I chose I large coffee jar. Your terrarium can use any clean and transparent container. The advantage of a jar is that you can decide whether to close it or leave it open.

Closed terrariums require plants that like humid environments, but can create a self-sustaining environment (no need to water). Open terrariums can grow just about anything.

Tip: The sticky residue left over from jar labels can be easily removed using hot water or eucalyptus oil and a tissue (good for de-gooping most surfaces).

Important: If you choose to lay the jar sideways like mine, make sure the jar has deep shoulders or your contents may overflow. Otherwise, upright can work just as well, if not better.

Step 2: Layering

The method of getting into small openings is to use a spoon.

The first layer of your little big planet will be small pebbles to provide drainage. This layer doesn’t need to be more than a finger width’s deep. (I chose to do two layers of pebbles because rocks rock.)

The second layer is just a sprinkling of charcoal to keep the air and water clean and healthy for your beloved plants.
Soil is the final layer of the gardening cake before we get to the fun part

Step 3: Plant Those Gems

Yes! It’s time to plant. Having delicately uprooted some small resilient greens from my garden (that can also be bought at any nursery), I simply poked some holes in the dirt with my finger where I wanted to nestle them.

After collecting some healthy and vibrant moss from the cracks in my patio, I gave them a hydrating spray with the spray bottle before lining the terrain.

Finally, I used my spoon to layer the uncovered ground with pebbles and placed some decorative rocks and shells.

But don’t stop there! This is your chance to get creative. Let your imagination run wild. Throw some miniature dinosaurs into your Jurassic park. How about a pond, or a Venus flytrap?