How confident a gardener are you? When it comes to indoor plants, my confidence has sky-rocketed over the last few years, but as soon as I step out of the back door, it’s a totally different story. And it seems that I’m not alone – recent research by garden tool supplier Fiskars has revealed that 41 is the age Britons offically ‘get into gardening’. And I’m also one of the three in ten adults (according to the research) who still rely on their parents to sort out their outdoor space! Busted.
So when Fiskars invited me to join a gang of fellow bloggers at London’s Sky Garden, with the aim of boosting our gardening confidence through a terrarium workshop with self-confessed botany geek James Wong, I jumped at the chance. What an inspiring venue for an afternoon of green-fingered fun!
James was a brilliant teacher – encouraging us all to stop worrying about the ‘rules’ we seem to associate with gardening, and just get creative, give things a go, and have fun with it. You might make some mistakes along the way, but it really doesn’t matter!
‘A lack of enjoyment or interest in maintaining a garden usually stems from people not knowing where to start,’ says James. ‘That’s why developing an interest in gardening and showing the rewards that outdoor spaces can bring is essential, such as growing plants in small spaces, which can be fun and productive — you just need a little sunshine and some imagination.’ Add in Fiskars’ range of gardening tools, which make gardening tasks as easy as possible, and you’ve knocked down some of those main barriers that might discourage people from transforming their outdoor space. Check out James’s tricks and tips for easy gardening on the Fiskars website.
After a fascinating insight into the history of the terrarium, James busted some terrarium myths (succulents *aren’t* great for terrariums btw), and then gave us a quick guide on how to get started making our very own terrariums, using tools from Fiskars and trays of beautiful plants. What really struck me was how different everyone’s terrariums looked at the end of the session – we had desert-inspired landscapes, a minimalist scene, and an English forest floor to name a few.
My Fiskars terrarium is thriving back at home. It’s totally fern-based with a variety different ferns, and a covering of moss. I also added a couple of lichen-covered sticks for some architectural interest (one of James’s tips is to play with levels and add materials such as sticks and rocks to build up an interesting landscape in the terrarium). And when it comes to filling me with confidence to tackle other green-fingered tasks I’ve been putting off, it totally did the trick. I finally planted up the vintage carboy to create another terrarium (I’ll be sharing step-by-step details of that here very soon), and I’ve been out in our garden pruning shrubs and bushes with abandon (the Fiskars PowerGear X Pruners are a game-changer, seriously).
So start small with a manageable project such as planting up a terrarium to give yourself a confidence boost, and you’ll have this gardening lark nailed in no time!
Disclosure: This post was written in collaboration with Fiskars, but all views are very much my own.
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