Under the lid

The first jar was an accident: a pickle jar, a handful of moss lifted from a damp wall, and a lid screwed on out of curiosity. It fogged, cleared, fogged again, and three months later — never watered, never opened — the moss had spread across the glass and a fern nobody planted had appeared. We have been building sealed jars on the kitchen shelf ever since, and this site is the notebook: what goes in, in what order, and what the fog is trying to say.

Glass Garden Notes is only about gardens in glass — mostly closed jars, some open bowls — not about houseplants in general. A terrarium is a different hobby from a windowsill of pots: it runs on humidity instead of watering, on layers instead of drainage holes, on patience instead of feeding. The notes are written for someone with an empty jar, a kitchen and an hour.

How the notes are written

Cheap and from the kitchen. Pickle jars, chopsticks, a funnel from a rolled magazine, aquarium gravel from a corner shop, moss from a damp wall. When we mention something bought, it's small and it's earned its place on the shelf.

Honest about the fuzz. New jars grow mould, leaves yellow, a snail appears from nowhere. The notes treat the first month's problems as normal weather rather than failure, and say exactly what we do about each.

Built here, watched here. Every jar described was built and photographed on our own shelves, and the timings — how long fog lasts, when moss settles — are what we actually observed.

Three languages

The notes are written in English, Portuguese and Spanish for their own readers — light, humidity, what moss grows on the local walls and what jars the local shops sell all differ, and each version is written with its own windows in mind.

Independence

Glass Garden Notes is an independent editorial project. Nothing named here was sent to us; we paid for the gravel. If that ever changes, the note in question will say so at the top.

A jar that's doing something strange, or a question before your first? Tap the glass.