Have you ever attempted to create your own terrarium? Have you wondered how to design one, what plants to use, or why they fail? If so, today’s podcast is for you.
Especially in temperate parts of the world, winter is a time when there is less sunshine, colder temperatures, and much less green in our worlds. But there is an answer–one can keep their own miniature jungle, stream, or peaceful forest in a terrarium. Today On the Dogwatch we are joined by Ben Newell of Worcester Terrariums to help us understand the history, design, and possibilities for creating this kind of miniature universe.
Ben’s plant starter suggestions:
Java moss (grows well in and out of water)
Leuobryum glaucum – bun moss, pincushion moss
Dicranum scoparium – mood moss or greater fork moss
Thuidium tamariscinum – tamarisk moss
Mnium hornum – time moss
Lemon button fern
Creeping button fern
Sword fern
Peperomia sp.
Barbosella dusenii – orchid
Ficus thunbergii – oak leaf ficus
Podcast #27 Transcript – Worcester Terrariums
Michael Canfield: Hello. This is Michael Canfield, and thank you for joining us today on The Dogwatch. A Dogwatch is an evening shift of earlier late duty or the people who undertake it. This Dogwatch considers the natural world and the things that help us experience it, from dogs to watches and everything in between. Ultimately, it’s a place for us to go wherever curiosity takes us. Have you ever attempted to create your own terrarium? Have you ever wondered how to design one, what plants to use or why they fail? If so, today’s podcast is for you, especially in temperate parts of the world. Winter, like now, is a time when there’s less Sunshine, colder temperatures and much less green in our world. But there’s an answer one can keep their own miniature jungle stream or peaceful forest in a terrarium. Today on The Dogwatch, we are joined by Ben Newell of Worcester Terrarium to help us understand the history, design and possibilities for creating this kind of miniature universe. Ben, thanks so much for joining us today on The Dogwatch.
Ben Newell: Thanks for having me, Michael. I’m really looking forward to this.
Michael Canfield: So I assume I find you in Worcester today, which I understand is kind of west of London and Oxford and just a bit south of Birmingham. I’m kind of wondering if you took a walk today around the town where you live, what kinds of things would we see?
Ben Newell: Yeah, you’re right. It’s sort of like northwest of London, about two and a half hours away. I actually took a walk today because the weather was particularly nice. Worcester is quite a historical city. There are lots of nice Victorian buildings, and there’s a beautiful river that runs through the center, which is called the River Severn. It’s actually flooded at the moment because we had a lot of rainfall over the past few weeks. And the center of my city is underwater. But it happens every year, so it’s not surprising. But Worcester is a really nice place. There’s lots of things to do. It’s about 100,000 people live here, so it’s quite a small city. But my favorite thing to do is exactly what you mentioned. I love to go for walks in Worcester, especially running down by the river, but I can’t do that at the moment because it’s flooded. What kinds of temperatures is it obviously is not frozen there now. Not now. We’re sort of just coming out of winter, so the leaves are starting to emerge on the trees and it’s a little bit early. Actually. I wouldn’t go planting my vegetables out now because we’ll definitely have a few more frosts, but we’re hovering around eight degrees Celsius now.
Michael Canfield: Oh, wow. All right. Well, we’re in very different places. As I told you, I live in Minnesota, so we’re still well in the below freezing and sometimes into the below zeros Fahrenheit. So I’m a little jealous, I have to say that you’ve seen buds already I think I am, too.
Ben Newell: We don’t really get the extreme of any sort of weather, so we occasionally get snow, but it doesn’t happen every year. And the past few years we’ve had really nice summers, which have been very hot, but occasionally we just have totally mediocre weather. Yeah.
Michael Canfield: Wow. Well, each place has its own unique environment, and I’m kind of curious. So we talk a little bit about the outside. What’s, like outside there rainy, flooding, et cetera. But you have an interesting inside. Right. And part of the idea of this podcast and then especially your undertaking there in Westerns is the internal environments and creating sort of natural environments internally. Can you describe what we see on your videos, et cetera? Where is that and what facilities do you have that looks so green, et cetera? And kind of how is that constructed?
Ben Newell: I live in a Victorian house and my house used to be a fish and chip shop, so there was an extension put on this house where people would come in and buy their fish and chips. So it’s no longer a fish and chips shop, hasn’t been for over 30 years. But that extension is now my workshop. And it’s quite a nice sized room. It used to be the living room, but we swapped over. So, yeah, that’s my workspace. I’m very fortunate to have it. It’s quite cold because it’s a Victorian, uninsulated house. But that’s where I do all of my work. I record all of my videos in there, teach students from across the world via Zoom in. There have people to come and do in person workshops, and that’s my little space. But you have, like, how many terrariums in there? So I actually don’t know, but I’m going to guess probably around 50. Okay. And I’m constantly creating them for content to put online. And I do sell them, but I have about 50 which sit in that workshop and I track their progress and just look after them.
Michael Canfield: A random question, so I can’t let the fact that it used to be a fish and chip’s place go too quickly. Are there any things that are remnants or things that would kind of give away that it was a fish and chips place? Does it smell? Are there, like, any kinds of architectural things that you can tell?
Ben Newell: Like, yeah, to be honest, no, not really. If you were to look at it from the outside, the house is slightly bigger than the other houses on the street. It’s a corner house. So as you’re looking at it, it would normally be just sort of two up, two down, quite a small house. But with this extension, then on the end of that extension is the garden. It makes the house look quite big from outside. But no other than that, there’s no real sign that it used to be a fish and chip shop.
Michael Canfield: That’s too bad. That would be kind of funny. All right, so your business Worcester terrariums. I know that right now it’s part of your existence. You have another job, et cetera, and it’s relatively new. I also know that you explored bonsai a little bit early on, and then that sort of helped develop into this fascination with terrariums and creating them. I’m curious if you can say a little bit about how did that happen and how did you get into making terrariums.
Ben Newell: I’d like to say that I have always been interested in plants, but I used to work at a primary school in my city and I was part of the reception class for a year, which is the youngest class in the primary school. And I got put in charge of the composting with a few of the children. And for some reason I got very interested in composting and that kind of led on to me reading about vegetable gardening. And there was an allotment site right next to the school. So I put my name on the waiting list and managed to get one fairly swiftly. And I just became really obsessed with growing vegetables. So to cut a long story short, at some point, a few years after this, I discovered bonsai and that really caught my interest. And once again, I got pretty deep into this. And at this point I kind of realized that I wanted to work in horticulture. And so I took a job as a gardener at a large family home not too far from my house and discovered I didn’t really like being a gardener. That did not last very long, but again, at some point along the line, I don’t even know how it happened, but I had perhaps seen one online or something or even on social media and I read up on it. But there wasn’t a lot of information available about terrariums at that time. So I remember going to an Ikea, picking up a vase and just putting a photonia in there, and it died fairly swiftly. But at this point I realized I was highly interested in terrariums, so I continued making them just as a hobby. And, yeah, it kind of started from there and three years later was when I started my business, which was in September 2019. But then we went swiftly into a lockdown after that.
Michael Canfield: Yeah. Did that lock down help hurt or was it sort of a combination? Ben Newell: So at the time it hurt because I obviously couldn’t make any sales. I couldn’t do workshops, but I hadn’t actually started workshops at that point, but I had plans to. So we went into lockdown and the sort of revenue for my business pretty much stopped. So at that point, I really sort of focused on creating an online presence, which did very well for me over 2020, going into 2021. And in hindsight, actually, that was a really good thing to happen to me because while selling terrariums will always be a part of my business, I realized that what I truly love doing is creating content and creating videos, teaching people online. And had the lockdown not happened, I probably wouldn’t have explored that quite as deeply as I did. So in hindsight, I think it was a good thing for me, my business.
Michael Canfield: Yeah, it kind of pushed you more in that direction quickly, it would seem. My next question is actually around that. And I’m kind of curious about this transition from making terrariums to interpreting them, especially through a virtual presence. What is this process of doing that transition? What is it taught you about people and terrariums and also how to communicate in that form?
Ben Newell: So one of the great things about the social platforms is that I’ve been able to connect with people around the world rather than just people within my city, because posting to our own is not possible. Once they’re fully planted, they don’t mail well at all. So meeting people from around the world, it’s been one of the best aspects of this. And it was quite surprising to me just how many people are interested in making terrariums. Because I think even on a very simple level, a terrarium is quite easy to make and it’s something you could do in an hour with your children or just as a small hobby or something on the side. So lots and lots of people were interested in this. And I made it my goal to post every day, and I did that. But sometimes it would just be a photo of a plant with a paragraph or two alongside of it. And this really start to help build a community. So from September 19 through all of 2020, I don’t remember the exact numbers, but Instagram is my main platform. And yeah, there was just a really large community that seemed to accrue on there.
Michael Canfield: What kinds of people do you feel like are viewing that or are interested in terraria? Is it a range? Is it certain pockets that you can identify? I don’t know if you’ve done any of that, sort of. I don’t know what you’ve called it like brand research or whatever. But even more generally, who’s interested in terrariums.
Ben Newell: So it’s funny, when I look at my insights, it’s straight down the middle, 50 50 split between males and females. The largest group is 25 to 35.
Michael Canfield: Really?
Ben Newell: That’s the largest group by some distance. I’ve not checked my analytics recently, and I’ve had a recent spike in followers across all social platforms. But I know. I mean, I’ve had a chat to a nine year old student from Hong Kong who wants to talk to her class about terrarium. So I had a Zoom session with her. And then there was a 14 year old boy from Indonesia who was really interested in terrariums. And I’m still in contact with him now. He occasionally sends me photos of terrariums he’s made and then going all the way up to people in their 60s and 70s, according to my Instagram analytics. But I’ve not done any sessions with them. That’s just people who follow me. Right. Interesting. So certainly a lot of kids, but that demographic of the 25 to 35.
Michael Canfield: Again, I think if you’d ask me, just cold. I’m not sure that’s what I would predicted. I don’t know about you. Does that surprise you at all or is that sort of what you would have thought?
Ben Newell: I think probably I would have probably perhaps gone a little bit younger, but I’m not surprised that it was 25, 35. Okay, alright. So I wanted to ask you just first of all to talk a little bit about the basics of terrariums. We’re not going to go through that in lots of detail, but just especially for people who are new to it, a few of the aspects and then we’ll dig a little deeper into some of the aspects of design and more of the plant components, et cetera. But I’m curious because in some ways all terrariums are kind of similar. Right. So for those new to the undertaking, can you describe the basic design of a terrarium in kind of the general way that they’re constructed? Yeah. So a terrarium, in simple terms is a clear glass container that houses plants. Within this glass container, a miniature water cycle occurs. So water will evaporate from the soil level. It will hit the top of the container and it will fall back down. I forgot to mention that the container, it does need to be closed, so it needs to have a lid to keep the humidity in. So that’s really important. The water will just evaporate and it ceases to do what it’s meant to do. So it creates a miniature tropical environment for these plants to grow in. And many of the house plants that we have in our home do come from tropical parts of the world. And I found them much happier when they’re kept in glass inside of a terrarium. And they’re kind of built up in a way where you have your glass container, then typically speaking, you put in a layer of gravel which acts as drainage, then some form of mesh, and then the soil on top of the mesh. So the mesh stops the soil from falling into the drainage layer. And then you plant your plants into the soil. And that in simple terms is a terrarium.
Michael Canfield: Right. And how important is I mean, the gravel is probably relatively forgiving. And I know on some of your videos you talk about the materials, but it seems like the basic materials there as far as soil, you’re not talking about like potting soil, you get at the home store what is the most basic components of the soil layer.
Ben Newell: So I think the soil is one of the most important layers to get. Right. And if you were to just use regular potting soil or compost or soil from the garden, your terrarium would not last very long because it would become very compact as the roots grow into it. It would lose nutritional value very quickly and stop taking up water. So the terrarium would survive for a short period of time, but eventually it would fail. So to create a good quality terrarian soil, you need to have something that opens the soil up. And what I like to use is a bonsai material. So you could use Akadama, which is the most popular ones I saw, but it’s quite expensive. There’s molakai, which is often sold as cat litter. You could use permission or even something like Perlite, which is used more commonly amongst gardeners. So the actual soil itself, I like to use something called Koya, which is a byproduct of the coconut trade. So all of the husks from around a coconut, they get ground up and compressed into a brick which you hydrate and it turns into this fluffy medium, the coil on its own. While it’s a nice medium, it’s not nutritionally devoid along with the bonding of materials, so they have no nutritional value whatsoever. If you were to grow plants in just those two things, they would eventually become quite unhealthy. So to combat that, I like to use worm castings because they’re quite rich, they add nice soil structure to the overall substrate and they’re quite cheap and readily available. I get mine from a fishing tackle shop and it’s just such a wonderful fertilizer for plants and totally organic.
Michael Canfield: Right. So for people who are listening, it seems like the most important thing is getting that thing right.
Ben Newell: That is probably the biggest problem with almost all terrariums that have been built or that people just get some regular soil, it lasts a little while and then it fails. Michael Canfield: You’re saying that if you get a brick of this coconut husk, basically, which you can get kind of anywhere, you can order it, right. It’s on all the online platforms. I’m not going to advertise for certain ones because they don’t need it. But you can get a brick of coconut husks, basically. You can get the worm castings and you can get a little bit of whether it’s cat litter or very fine lava or whatever, mix those together and you’re pretty good to go. Is that right?
Ben Newell: Absolutely. Right. Yeah. That’s a pretty basic but very good terrain soil. Michael Canfield: Yeah. And I’ll just plug a little bit for those who are interested in I mean, Worcester terrariums has a trove of videos both on Instagram and on YouTube where you explain all this and go through it and that’s a lot of the value. That’s how I found you and that’s all there. So we don’t have to dig in on that. But I really encourage people to go and look at those and you can really see it. So to kind of move on. I really want to pick your brain about plants, so use a lot of Moss in your designs, and I maybe want to start there because that’s a predominant plant group. How do you choose the species of Moss? How do you source them? And I also am curious, do mosses need what I guess a biologist might call a fertilization or wintering period, like many temperate organisms, or can they just grow year round? Do you have to be careful about that?
Ben Newell: Yeah. This is quite an interesting topic because I’m very fortunate that in my country well, this is actually the base of Scotland, but there’s a company called Mosquito who they collect moss from areas of woodland that are being selled for timber or property development, and they then sell that moth on the moth is all temperate and I’m not an expert on mosses, but certain kinds of mosses do need a winter dormancy period, but others do not. And the kinds that I get from Mosquitoes, they seem to do very well in terrarium, and they don’t require that winter dormancy. There are tropical species of Moss that you can use. One of my favorites is very popular in the aquarium hobby, and that’s Java Moss, and that grows very well out of water. So it’s known as an aquatic moss, but it also grows very well immersed. So in the terrarium, which is very humid, Java Moss grows very well, and there are lots of types of classic tropical masks that do that. But my favorite kind of Moss to use is called liquorium glaucom, and in short, just burned them off. And that is a temperate species of Moss, but it just does incredibly well in its terrarium. It just looks fantastic. And that one doesn’t need wintering, so that one will just keep going, right? Yeah. So I found that in the summer it doesn’t like hot temperatures. So in the UK, it’s okay because I keep my terrain inside out of any sunlight. But if you’re in a sort of tropical country or somewhere very hard, look over and walk, it might not be the best choice using the terrarium. Okay. So you use that one.
Michael Canfield: Do you use any others sort of that are by name, or is that your predominant?
Ben Newell: Yeah. The others I use there’s one called Dichonomages, which is a very beautiful species of Moss, Lacana scope. Those two are commonly known as mood Moss or greater fork Moss. There’s one called fluidium tamariskinum, which is known as tamarisk Moss. That’s a wonderful species of Moss, too. There’s also time Moss, which I believe is called Niam Hornum. And all these mosses do incredibly well in a terrarium. I’ve had terrariums for nearly a year with them in unless they’re looking as healthy as ever. Okay. But I think the key really is to not let them dry out but also not saturate them. There’s a balancing act.
Michael Canfield: Okay. And I’m just curious, do you ever go to like I know you’ve talked about on some of your media store plant place greenhouse in your city. Would you ever go and look for plants and then look for the mosses that sometimes around them? Because often seems like sometimes there’ll be mosses growing at the base of a plant that you could buy. I’m curious if you’ve ever sort of mined any of those sources in my garden.
Ben Newell: I actually have on some of the bonsai that I have, there are mosses that grow there which work very well in a terrarium. Something I’m very mindful of is especially now my sort of online presence has grown is encouraging people to go out and collect Moss because that’s something you really shouldn’t do. You could get into a lot of trouble for that. Moss is a very slow growing. They take many years to establish and then for people just to go and blindly take them without knowing if they’re even going to work in a terrarium, it isn’t a good thing to do, which is why I’m very pleased. Most clips exist because the mosses they take and sell are going to be destroyed anyway. So they’re kind of saving them in a roundabout way. So sometimes you’ll buy a plant from the shop and I’ll notice that there is Moss growing on the soil surface. And I’ll always give it a try. But it’s very hard to identify Moss. There are thousands of species and a few of them I’ve used I’m not even sure what their names are. Right. But it seems like we’ll get to a design in a few minutes. But that seems like one of the major plant groups.
Michael Canfield: Right. That you use probably the predominant based plant group for terrain. Would you say that’s true? Yes, I would say that’s true. Okay. And then moving on to other species of plants, I’m curious, what are the other main groups? What are the ones that are sort of more fringe? What do you like to explore and what do you use sort of more on a regular basis? And then what are some of the things as far as plants that you use but use sparingly?
Ben Newell: So Ferns are a great choice. It can be hard to find small Ferns, but there are a couple of types of Ferns that I like to use, especially within the what’s called the Nephroepus genus. Okay. They’re known as lemon bus, and Fern is one of them. That’s a common name or the sword Fern. And they’re tropical species. Generally speaking, you want to choose small leaf plants because large leaf plants don’t tend to look so good in small glassware, small leaf, slow growing plants. So there’s also the Ficus genus, which is also known as the figure that has a lot of nice plants in it. And these plants, they like to sort of creep and climb up surfaces. They form dense mats in the terrarium. There’s also peperomia, which is a very wide range of plants. And they have some really small, beautiful species in that genus. So you can pick up a lot of these plants from garden centers, especially the baby plant section. Some of the more unusual ones you might have to go online onto or go into a certain groups online where people trade amongst themselves. But there are rare plant specialists. I know there are some in the US, there’s only some in the UK. But yes, it can be quite hard to find some of the plants that people use in terrariums because as it gains more popularity, the price has just gone up and up. So I do like to propagate a lot of these plants at home. Have you had pretty good luck at garden centers, etc.
Michael Canfield: Are in the baby plant section? I’ve always kind of wondered how many of them are actually baby plants, meaning that there will be good in terrariums. And then how do you know if it’s just going to get too big?
Ben Newell: Most of the plants you get in garden centers will eventually want to grow bigger. In a terrarium, it’s a matter of staying on top of it, pruning it not too frequently, but if it starts to get too big, then you can take some of the older leads out. But, yeah, I’ve had quite a lot of success from garden centers. I’d say most of the plants that I use, except for the moth, comes from a garden center. Okay. I’m especially fond of the Ferns, which you can divide into numerous plants from one baby plant. But yeah, a garniton is a great place to get to where implants from anyway. So you’ve divided especially Ferns. They work pretty well to divide. Okay. Yeah. So you can’t take cuttings from ferns. One of the things I really like to do with terrarium is to use cuttings. So you take like a large amount of plant and you can take a few cuttings from that place them into the terrarium, and they grow very well in a humid atmosphere. But with Ferns, you can’t take leaf cutting, so you have to divide them at the base. But they do that very well and very easily. Okay. So you get a small Fern and then divide it into a number of different things and plant them separately.
Michael Canfield: What about orchids? I mean, I know orchids you need often. Most species need air movement, et cetera. But have you found orchids that work?
Ben Newell: Yes. So there’s one called I’m going to say this wrong, but I’m going to try anyway. I think it’s the barbasella de seniae or something like that. So it’s the tiniest Orchid. It’s absolutely tiny. And that’s done very well in some of the smaller terrariums that I’ve made. As far as orchids go, I’ve not really experimented with them much. Okay. I’d like to, but as you mentioned, they kind of require a little more specialist care, and they won’t just thrive if you put them in glass. So I’ve not really experimented with that. But that one you mentioned does pretty well. Yeah. It’s not really grown that much, but it’s still looking green and vibrant. Okay. And it’s just incredibly tiny, like half the size of my Pinky nail. Each leaf is. Oh, my God. Wow. All right.
Michael Canfield: And did you have to order it or how did you come about that one? Yeah.
Ben Newell: So I believe I got it from a private seller on ebay. Okay. Which there are a lot. I mean, there’s an whole Orchid culture as well. There’s no question people who do that.
Michael Canfield: Cool. A related question about the size of plants in bonsai or bonsai, however you want to say it, there’s this idea of ramification where you kind of prune back the branches and make smaller outgrowths. Do you just select for plants that have small leaves or do you kind of prune them back and then get smaller leaves from those plants? Do you see what I mean?
Ben Newell: Yeah. So in terrarium building, you generally would pick plants with smaller leaves anyway. I know what you mean with the ramification things, because some of the trees that use the bonsai, you can actually make the lease smaller with using certain techniques. But in terrarium building, there’s such a wide range of plans to choose from. And there are thousands of small lease plans which do really well in a terrarium. So we’re quite blessed with that. Yeah.
Michael Canfield: And I guess the last question just on plants, are there any plants that you could point people to that are just maybe not super available? Not like the most common thing, but you feel like are just absolutely outstanding or cool or if you kind of want to go to the next level that you feel like are just shouldn’t be missed.
Ben Newell: Yeah. So there’s one called the oak leaf fig or the oak leaf Ficus. It goes into many names, and it’s a very small, slow growing plant with leaves about the size of my thumbnail. And it really is a very stunning plant. Works great in a terrarium. It takes all the boxes for the perfect terrarium plant. The correct name is Ficusi, but it’s also known as Ficus Quirky Solia or as the oak leaf. Ficus. That’s a wonderful plant. One of my favorite plants, which isn’t that common. I don’t see people using it very much into areas, which surprises me. It’s called Parasia numularophobia, and that is known commonly as the creeping button Fern. And that’s an epiphytic Fern. So it grows on the surface of trees or rocks. And it’s just the most stunning plant. And I think that plant should be used more interactions and supplies more people don’t.
Michael Canfield: Okay, cool. I’ll put those in the notes, too. I’ll look these up in the spelling so people can just click on them. So a different question. One of the things that I’ve noticed in the terrarium space, if you will, is there are lots of beautiful terrariums, and you can actually make a beautiful terrarium right, take the glass, put the stuff in it, place plants, and then take a photo of it or an image video, and it looks amazing. However, the whole idea of a terrarium or I think what people hope for is that it will last. So even though they can look great when they’re created, I wonder if you can kind of describe what does the life of a terrarium look like over, say, six months, a year, two years, and how do you go about maintaining it?
Ben Newell: So it actually does have a long life and develops into something beautiful. So I think that’s a really good question, because there’s definitely you see a lot of people creating these beautiful terrarians, which look Instagram worthy straight away, but in a few months, perhaps not looking so good. So I mentioned earlier that getting the soil right is absolutely a prerequisite. You have to have good quality soil to have a good terrarium. The other two things you need to have is a good light source. So the terrarium needs light. And you also need to not overwater the terrarium because the water has nowhere to run off to. If you can get those three things right, you’re off to a really good start. And every terrarium is different. Terrain’s can be quite stagnant places because you can put a lid on this terrarium and not open it for a while. So there’s no air movement in there. And with that, it can create mold issues. Now, to combat the mold issues, there’s a certain type of microphone called springtails, which you can add to the terrarium early on, and they actually help keep mold outbreaks down. So they actually feed on mold, decaying matter, fungi, and they’re a really good addition to terrarium with those things I just mentioned that gives you a really good platform to build on terrariums change. The glass container contains lots of living things. Living plants, sometimes Marco fauna. So to expect it to look the day like it did the day it was planted is unrealistic. The plants are going to get older. Some of the older leaves are going to die off. And I think there’s a real beauty within that. I’m looking at where I’m in my room right now, and I can see some of the older leaves are dying off. Some of the leaves in the center of the Fern have started to Brown. But we’re not trying to create something perfect. You’re trying to give these plants a good home to live in and to hopefully thrive. So not every plant is going to look 100% all of the time.
Michael Canfield: And I think it’s really important to accept that, yeah, each terrain is different, but would you imagine that there’s certain maintenance that you need to do as far as either pruning or cutting things back? I think one of the questions is, like, how much is too much? It seems like eventually the plants are going to get big. So you would imagine you need to prune it and make sure you’re cutting things back and then fertilize it. It seems like. Do you have to add more worm castings or how does that work?
Ben Newell: Yeah. So you will have to prune the plants eventually. Some people like to just let them go to see what happens, and I’d like to do that sometimes. But pruning them is definitely a good idea from time to time. Cleaning the glass is also important because you can develop stains which are very stubborn and difficult to clean off after a while. That’s really important. Eventually the plants into a home. Typically, they aren’t heavy feeders, so the castings you add into the soil will last a long time. Once that’s used up or ideally a little bit before you can just top dress with more worm castings. And I had one plant which wasn’t looking very well, and I topped dressed with wearing castings, watered it in, and quite literally within a few days, those leaves just turn a deep green again. Oh, really? It’s really nice to see. And sometimes you may have to take a plant out of a terrarium and prune the roots as you would in Bonsai, and then perhaps put it back in or even replace the plant. So I don’t view a terrarium as being a permanent thing. I view it as a living thing that we may have to tinker with along its lifespan. Right. Michael Canfield: And I guess I wanted to ask you just in your professional judgment, my sense is that you don’t want to fertilize in the sense that you don’t want to add miracle grow or any of those things because they accumulate very quickly. Is that true? Or do you sometimes add some kind of micronutrients or whatever? So I don’t personally add any micronutrients or chemical fees because I believe the worm castings, they provide more than enough nutrition for the plants.
Ben Newell: I know some people don’t want to call it a myth, but I often read that you should use nutrition to avoid soil because it slows the plants growth down, which may be true, but I would certainly rather have faster growing healthy plants that I prune than slower growing plants that become malnutrition. But I know that’s definitely a talking point within the terrain community. I know I’m not saying I’m right, but that’s just my opinion. Right. Yeah. You mentioned the sort of microfauna.
Michael Canfield: Right. Like the idea of having organisms in there, the collembolans are, these little non insect hexapods as a entomo nerd would call them. Well, let me put it this way. I think that your most viewed video has to do with some small invertebrates in a terrarium that really appeals to people. So maybe you can describe the phenomenon, what happened with that? And then did you intend to have creatures in there, like the snails, etc. Or are they mostly interlopers?
Ben Newell: So the video you mentioned I uploaded to Tik Tok. I believe it was on the 7th or eight of February, which was my mother’s birthday. And it was just I cut a slice of cucumber, I put it into a terrarium and this terrarium house, pink Dragon millipedes, some wood lice and some snails. Now I’d put the millipede and wood license there on purpose. My friend Adam owns a company called Micro Exotics and they specialize in Marco for one of the terrarium. So he kindly sends me them and I create homes for them. But the snails must have come in on one of the Ferns because I typically use cuttings into our home. So I don’t like to introduce outside soil. But with Ferns I don’t have a choice because you need to keep the root intact. So I think that some snail eggs were left in in that soil and they hatched and eventually reproduced. And there are quite a lot of these tiny little garlic snails in there which thankfully do not eat the plants except for the Begonia. They seem to like the Begonia. So the Begonia has no chance in this terrarium. So yeah, I put this cucumber in and I recorded the creatures in the terrarium just eating this cucumber. And when I went to bed that night, it was my most viewed TikTok video at 250,000 views. I was really pleased I posted about it. And then when I woke up it was at 3 million views and I was ecstatic. I left work an hour later or an hour and a half and it was on 5 million views. And then come lunchtime it hit 8 million views. And then I think when I got home it was at 16. And then the local news company got in contact with me and they wrote an article about it and I think now it’s perhaps on 59 or 40 million views on TikTok. And from there it just had like, I had just a load of orders come in for my terrarium kit. I had a lot more subscribers on my YouTube. A lot of these people came over to Instagram and subscribed to me. So since the 8 February my social channels have just exploded. And it’s all because I put a cucumber into the terrafia and there were snails there, right? Am I right that it seems like the snails especially appeal to people? Or what’s your sense of why did people gravitate toward this video so much? So I think perhaps it was the way it was recorded. So I started off by saying, watch what happens when I put a cucumber in a terrarium. I then put the cucumber in and you see a single snail crawling over this cucumber. And these snails are really cute, they’re so small and they’re just really nice to look at. And then all of a sudden you get these strange looking millipedes which look more like centipedes. And I got closer shots of them sort of around the circumference of the cucumber. It almost looks like they’re having dinner together and they’re sort of like eating away. And then their Woodlife come in and they start having a bit too. But there was a particular scene which people seem to really like. There was a snail just sliding down one of the millipede backs. So I caught about 3 seconds of this. And I think there are thousands of comments on that video, but many of them were saying, hey, did you see that snail hitching a ride on that millipede?
Michael Canfield: It’s funny what attracts people’s attention, but it’s nice that you hit on that. And I’m also very grateful that I’ve been able to get some of your time now because the Dogwatch is much more modest and it’s reach. But now you’ve got millions of people who are viewing your video, and that’s awesome. It’s neat to have that kind of exposure and also get that word out to people about how you can make terrariums and stuff like that. I wanted to go back to just a little bit. I have kind of two more main questions. The first one is about design, and I’m curious when you kind of look at this space, if you’ll call it people who are interested in terrariums and how they make them, there’s kind of a conversation going around about what you can do, how you can make them in the most basic sense. You can just take some gravel materials, plants, put them in the thing, put a cap on it, a little water, and you’ve got a terrarium. Aside from that, there’s sort of other principles of design that you can use about the types of materials, how they’re put together, the selection of material and placement. And I’m curious what you can say about kind of what of those elements we can have in mind as we both observe and then also consider creating a terrarium ourselves.
Ben Newell: So for me, I like to keep things very simple. In a terrarium. I don’t like to use bright colors. I try to use different shades of green is the best way I can explain that. Not to say I don’t use plants of different colors sometimes, but that is always in my head. I don’t want things to be too bright. I think planting in odd numbers is good initially before the plants grow, because even numbers and symmetry just looks very man made. That’s something I got from Bonsai, actually, because I remember looking at creating a forest planting, and they were saying you need to plant in 3570r. Once it gets past nine or eleven, it doesn’t really matter because the human eye can’t really differentiate that. But nine or eleven and below, you want to use an odd number and to avoid symmetry, taller plants being at the back is generally a good idea, but rules can be broken. I think I like to do just there are small things I like to do. So when I put the soil into the terrarium, I like to arrange it on a gradient so it’s higher at the back and lower at the front because there’s more surface areas visible when you look at it from the front. And it creates a nice sense of depth. And I just think I think the best thing I could tell people is just to keep things simple. When you’re adding the soil into the container, you don’t want to add too much soil. It’s got to be about the plants, at least for me, rather than I see lots of people creating these really beautiful patterns with sand and different materials below the soil level. And actually, it looks very nice, but it’s just not my style. I really liked terrain to be pretty much 100% about the plants inside. You can add hardscape materials, like certain types of wood or rocks or even miniature figurines or like an old snail shell or something, and it looks really nice. But first and foremost, for me, it’s about giving these plants home to be happy in.
Michael Canfield: Right. And it seems like in your aesthetic, the foliage and the colors of the foliage, et cetera, the subtleties of those things are more important in your design elements than, say, rocks or aspects, as you say, of hardscape. Is that accurate?
Ben Newell: Yes, I would say so. The plants, they’re truly wonderful with lots of different textures, colors, just different tones. It’s really about the plants for me. Yeah.
Michael Canfield: And probably not so much like miniature garden gnomes. Right. I know that’s like a British thing, but doesn’t seem to be in your design wheelhouse.
Ben Newell: No. I think sometimes the figurines can look quite nice in there, but I think there’s a fine line between looking nice and perhaps looking, I don’t know, for lack of a better term, sometimes it can be a little bit tacky. And I’ve been guilty of that myself.
Michael Canfield: Do you like garden gnomes outside as well? And maybe it’s just a stereotype of Brits. I don’t know. Maybe you can help me understand, but do you like the garden gnome in the garden? Do you have any or not?
Ben Newell: No, not really. Again, in the garden for me, it’s just about the plants I mentioned earlier. I didn’t want to be a gardener, and that became apparent to me soon after being a gardener. But I do really enjoy gardening at home, so I like collecting sort of more unusual plants up to grow in the garden. I’m a big fan of woodland gardens. That’s the style I really like, so I’m experimenting with that at home at the moment. So before my last question, I just have to push this a little bit if I came by.
Michael Canfield: Right. Which hopefully someday I’ll meet you in person and see your place. Sure. If I brought you a garden home as a gift, would you keep it in your garden or would you be like, you know what? I can’t have this in my garden.
Ben Newell: I’ve got to say it would depend on the name because I think that there would be some nice looking garden gnomes that I would probably have in my garden. But the ones I’m imagining are like these really colorful porcelain ones that I would probably throw away and hope you never ask me about it again.
Michael Canfield: Yeah. I have to say it’s reciprocal. I think I have a little Moss garden, et cetera, and that wouldn’t last too long. It would get broken by the dog or something, I think pretty quickly. No offense to Brits, et cetera, and I don’t know if it’s truly just a Britain thing, but I do have a sense that it comes out of the sort of hermit history and all that stuff in Britain. I’ve definitely seen a few garden names in my city, for sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, having a little fun there, but also just curious where you stand. Last main question. There’s obviously a long standing tradition of Botany in England going back to Joseph Hooker, who’s the director of the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, and then also sort of more specifically, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, who was the author of this book ungrowth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases, and you sort of developed some of the early cases that allowed for transport of delicate plant materials across oceans. I’m curious now that you’re further into this and you’re also English, do you feel a connection to this history and in what ways is this sort of revival of terrariums? How does it relate to and how is it inspired by the past?
Ben Newell: That’s a good question. So I suppose. Yeah, I do feel sort of in some relation to it because terrariums came from boarding cases, and I think it’s just a truly remarkable invention, really. I believe they were used a little bit before Ward, but when he sort of sorry, I think I need to start this one again. Could you ask that question again? Sorry. Yeah. So the full question, you mean? Yeah, please. Sorry. Yeah, sure. I can do it. It’s fairly long, but no problem at all. So as a last question, there’s obviously a longstanding tradition of Botany in England going back to Joseph Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Garden at Q. He was sort of famous and a friend of Darwin’s, but more specifically the work of Nathaniel Bagshell Ward, who was the author of The Growth of Plants and Closely glazed Cases. And he helped develop some of the early cases that allowed for the transport of delicate plant materials across oceans. I’m curious if you feel a connection to this history being English and in what ways the revival of terrariums that you’re a part of relates to and is inspired by this past. Yeah. So I think terrariums came from boarding cases, and you can’t help but feel a connection between the two. I’ve read about Warden. He seems truly fascinating it seems that every inch of his home and garden was filled with terrariums or Warding cases, let’s say. And I kind of feel like I’m a little bit like that, perhaps on a watered down scale, but I’m experimenting with having terrariums outside. Pretty much any window sill space I have is occupied by terrariums or terrarium plants. So, yeah, I do feel sort of like we certainly owe a lot to him. Well, we owe very much to him. I think with the revival of terrariums, a lot of that is down to social media. And I think people have different opinions on this. But certainly for me, social media gave us a platform to see terrariums, I mean, as of them on social media or perhaps in magazines. Where else would you see a terrarium other than the garden center? And the ones in garden centers are mass produced. They’re made only to make money, so they’re, generally speaking, a low quality. So I think social media really gave us a platform to share our work, to see other people’s work. And I’m not sure exactly how that relates to Ward, but I suppose it all started with him. And yeah, it’s just fascinating how I believe there was a revival in the 60s or 70s. Quite often people of the generation above me, when they hear about terrariums or that I’m interested in them, they say, oh, you know, my mother used to have one, or I used to have one when I was young. And then I think they sort of went out of fashion. And more recently, at least over the past few years, they seem to have come back. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it does seem like this goes in ways, but I agree that it seems like this revival, especially with the advent of social media.
Michael Canfield: And this kind of sharing really allows for much more robust information to be shared and for people to develop it in a way that they wouldn’t. I tried a few when I was a kid, et cetera. But I’m sure I just used regular soil and didn’t know what plants and there wasn’t a lot of space to be able to figure out what to do. Right. I couldn’t go to your Instagram at that point. So we had Jim Costa on who studies Darwin and wrote this book, Darwin’s Backyard. Right. And how Darwin kept all these experiments and stuff in his backyard. And I think with Ward and now you I think there is a great British tradition of doing this kind of science and Botany, et cetera, effectively in the home or close to home and keeping all these things, which is a fascinating and I think inspiring tradition. So you’re really a part of that, it seems. And I think a lot of people obviously find it inspiring that’s sort of the data say that so really appreciate you sharing that with us. And I think as a last thing how can people find you? Where are the best ways to interface with what you’re doing?
Ben Newell: My main platforms are Instagram and now Tik Tok so there are two platforms which you can find me on but also YouTube. So if you’re interested in making terrariums I have nearly 50 videos on YouTube now which show you how to make terrariums, how to care for them. I show you how I make specific terrariums. I suppose if you want to interact with me, the best one would be Instagram. That’s probably my main platform. And what’s your handle there? Just Worcester terrariums. Okay. And for those of us who are I mean if you’re in Massachusetts, there’s Worcester, Massachusetts and everybody knows how to spell Worcester But we would probably look at it and say workchester or something. So how do you spell that? Yeah, that’s right. It seems that it’s quite a difficult word to pronounce. Obviously I’ve grown up in the city so I now say it but it’s pronounced Worcester and it’s spelled W-O-R-C-E-S-T-E-R. Yeah, so some people will see it and I’ll be on the show notes and all that stuff for this but it’s important to get that straight from the source so it’s easy to find you. Well, it’s been such a great pleasure. I really appreciate you sharing the knowledge and for developing this Because I think many of us see a lot of value in it, but a few tips and also the inspiration from the visual side really helps people both appreciate it just from the photographs but also try it themselves and it’s a really easy thing to get involved with. So thanks for spending some time with us on the Dogwatch today and good luck with Worcester terrarians. Thank you very much, Michael, thank you very much for having me.
Thanks again to Ben for sharing the world of terrariums with us today. Don’t forget to write a short review of the Dogwatch on Apple podcasts and to subscribe as it helps us get the word out to others. Our music credit today is whiskey on the Mississippi by Kevin McCloy courtesy of Creative Creative Commons until our next shift, this is Michael Canfield thank you for joining us on the Dogwatch.
