Homemade terrarium or succulent porn...

...or how there are dinosaurs living on my kitchen windowsill.  A few years back, my Gran gave me this amazing terrarium that had been languishing in her garden unloved.  It was full of decaying leaves and soil but a quick wash in warm water and fairy liquid later and it came up good as new.  Around the same time, I inherited a load of houseplants from a friend who was emigrating and put two and two together to make a terrarium.  You can see it when it was first planted up over on my Instagram, look how far it's come!



I love terrariums, I love the minature world feel of them, like you've got the Lost World on your windowsill, complete with dinosaurs and tiny, little men.  It's like a whole ecosystem contained in one small glass jar.





I also love succulents, they're so easy to keep and green all year round.  I love their chubby, little leaves and the different shades of green.  They grow fast enough to keep your interest (unlike cacti who never do anything - boring) but not so fast that you're constantly having to find new, larger pots for them.  The perfect houseplant in my opinion.



So, when I stumbled upon a second unloved terrarium in my Gran's garden, I knew I had to snatch it from under her nose and pot it up for her birthday.  I've had so many compliments for my terrarium, it's probably my favourite houseplant (coming from a person with at least 17 houseplants) so it made sense to share the terrarium love around.  My Gran is the kind of person who doesn't NEED anything, she's a hairsbreadth away from a spot on a channel 4 hoarding documentary, so taking something unloved that she already owned and making it into something new and lovely made perfect sense.







I haven't given it to her yet but I'm sure she's going to love it, how could you not love these little guys?  For only 99p per plant and compost and gravel I already owned, it was an awesome thrifty present.  Especially awesome just before Christmas!



On a vague indoor gardening note - check out our Christmas tree!  It's the most beautiful tree we've ever owned I think, Andrew spent over an hour getting it to stand straight but now it looks amazing!  We got it from Dobbies garden centre, would definitely go there again, the trees are lovely and really nice quality.  They've got loads of Christmas shopping as well, lots of different outdoors brands, along with kitchenwares and pet stuff.  There's also a massive cafe though we didn't stay for coffee as it was a Saturday and it was hoaching.  I'd go back next year but probably go during the week so it was quieter.  Our tree was grown in Inverness, which is especially cool because that's where Andrew's folks are from!