The first terrarium can be seen to the right in this photo. Also note, Nick is not a short man-- the terrarium is that large.
As you can see things were a bit off balance between what really wasn't a small terrarium and the 'Mega Terrarium' that I was starting to construct. I had hoped that wouldn't bother me as I wasn't in a financial position to build two large terrariums in one year. With the sale of the smaller, first terrarium, I was able to offset the costs of building the third 'Micro Mega' terrarium.
In designing this new one I would take many of the elements I really enjoyed from the 'Mega' and apply them, in some cases with modifications, to the new design. The height of the 'Mega' I was in love with, though I felt two identical ones would take up too much space in the living room-- and I proved to myself I could work with the height. With the new design I wanted to keep the same footprint as the dimensions I feel work really well. I did opt for cutting one foot off the height to give me a 3' x 2' x 3' terrarium. I also compromised with myself to do two side doors instead of the two large doors on one side, just for ease of maintenance and planting.
Here is the initial sketch of how I wanted the terrarium to be. Thankfully the manufacturer of my glass terrariums doesn't mind my blueprints-- though we did go back and forth about this design and the stability of the glass with two side doors. We ended up agreeing on 2 side doors, 1' each, with the back pane of glass supported against the back pane and the side. I'm very happy with how it work out, so I am not losing much visible space. I also added thickness to the front and back panes using 3/4" glass with the doors being 1/4". It's thankfully not as heavy as the 'mega' which is all 3/4" (minus the doors side), so putting it up on the stand was much easier.
For this design I opted to go a bit outside my comfort zone for the background. Several years back a good friend, Mark Pepper and I did a terrarium in his basement. We experimented with some expanding spray foam and covered it with silicon and dirt to make a background. Several years later the technique is much improved and there's a style involving using a concrete binding agent and a 'coir' (coconut peat). I had seen it done a few times, and I thought it would be appropriate for this design.
Over Christmas break I made my annual trip back to Amish Country. Conveniently, the flight back to New Orleans was out of BWI, so my parents and I could spend a few hours in Inner Harbor before the afternoon flight. I have been to the aquarium many times over the years, seeing both the exhibits and behind the scenes. It had been several years since I was there and seeing how the exhibits aged (for the better or worse) was nice. The one thing that stuck out to me was how solid the hardscape was in the exhibits-- they had a very solid hardscape that doesn't take much to make it look good.
With this in mind, I decided if I was able to get any faux rocks that looked realistic enough, I would take the risk and work with them. Nick, a fellow planted glass box enthusiast told me about a young guy in Texas who was producing some nice closed cell foam rocks. I contacted him and said I'd really like to give them a shot. A week or so later a large box arrives at my door, far lighter than even I had anticipated. They were hollow, so I used some old grocery bags (that I recycle and use as trash bags) and then sprayed some expanding foam to fill the rocks so I could silicone them on the background. I then sprayed more foam around the back and sides, and placed some driftwood branches to give more planting surfaces for the miniature orchids that I've been growing.
The whole background cured for about a week until I trusted placing the peat mix on it. When I ordered the rocks I did a quick sketch to anticipate placement and shapes, but nothing prepares you for when you have to design a layout with the terrarium on its back on the floor. I tried hovering above to arrange the rocks and wood, but it was very difficult to get a feeling for placement. Yet more difficult was knowing that the design would be elevated on the stand, so anticipating how everything interacted was the hardest part of this hardscaping this design for me. I mixed the coconut peat (coir) and binder and placed some test pieces on the very bottom. It bothered me how homogenized and boring it looked to me. I really love the look and feel of tree fern panels, and this looked too fake to me. I decided to gather up all the dust and scrap pieces of tree fern I had, and break a few scraps. I used these pieces to push into the coir mixture to create more texture in it.
Once the texture was more to my liking, I began the long and tedious process of letting everything fully dry. I opted to give it nearly two weeks to be sure I wouldn't have chunks of background falling off in the future, as this is a real concern. After about a week, I set the terrarium up and placed it on the stand so I could wire up the fans and lights to give it some extra help drying-- though the real reason was so I could see how the wood fit in with the rocks and background.
Luckily for me, the background dried with no issues. Even more lucky was a small sale that Tropical Orchid Farm was having on some of my favorite small orchids. Their temperature zone is perfect for my growing conditions and I've had fantastic luck with their plants-- not to mention they're very generous with the sizes of their plants. I spaced out a number of small orchids on the branches. The goal was to have moss cover the spaces between the orchids, so just the leaves stuck out above the moss. In this design I wanted the main feature to be the rocks and branches, with just walls of small leaves weaving around the rest. I also wanted to mix textures with leaves of plants like Marcgravia, Peperomia and other neat vining plants.
Part 2 to follow shortly, detailing the progression of this exhibit over the next few months.
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