terrarium-inspired planters

I'm digging the terrarium craze right now (ha! digging.....boo.  Bad pun.) and I've been thinking for a while now I'd like to create my own. I found some succulents on sale at the local grocery store a while back and they've just been sitting on my windowsill in their cruddy little plastic pots - waiting for just the right decorative pots.

I was browsing my local dollar store and saw these vases for $1.25 each. Cheapo! I thought I might be able to plant my succulents in these glass vases... I kept looking and found the rocks there too!

  Also cheap. $1.00 a bag.

I started by pouring in some rocks.   The plan was to then wrap the plant in newspaper, set it in, and fill in between the paper and the glass.

Pretty brilliant idea.  Except.  The plants were four inches and I think the opening to the vase was only about 5 inches.  This was a little problematic, as it didn't leave much room to place the rocks in and pull the paper out.

So I ended up dumping the rocks out, putting the plant in and using a butter knife to fit the rocks into the vase.  This worked okay, but I ended up seeing a  little more dirt than I had wanted....

Tada! The final products!

 

 

 

Some pretty vases for my window!



Ah, planting is dirty work!

Now this was my past endeavour with succulents... I hope my new ones fare a little better.  I think maybe there wasn't enough drainage (???).

Poor little guys. But the ones I planted in my garden survived!

Do you have any tips for helping my new additions survive (and thrive, if it's not too much to ask!)? Have you had any success with terrarium-inspired planting?

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