Is it possible to create an internal garden in your home? What do you need to do and know to have a green area at home? Guide to the plants to choose and to the elements such as materials, waterfalls, rivulets for a real garden inside the house, with photos and tips.
Do you want to create a green corner inside your apartment? Here you will find all the steps for build a small garden: from the plants to choose from to the compositions, from the material to be used to the essential elements to create ponds, rivulets and waterfalls.
Table of Contents
Choose the location of the Garden
The choice ofcorner in the house, where you will make the indoor garden, is crucial.
The ideal is to find a brightly lit area, assuming that thedirect sunlight coming from above would certainly be ideal for the well-being and longevity of plants.
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If you do not have such an area, opt for a free corner that you intend to embellish, where you will place a nice container, of the size chosen to your liking, to create your garden preferring plants that need little light.
Remember that the place you choose, the bigger it is and the easier it will be to create an ideal environment to host all the plants even in future growth stages.
How to create an indoor garden at home
House temperature and climate
There temperature in your green corner it must be constant, without thermal changes, therefore away from radiators and external doors that can cause thermal shocks. Also a good one must not be missing air exchange daily and as previously suggested a good one natural light.
Container and garden shape in the apartment
The shape of the garden will be equal to that of the container you have chosen. Surely a shaped container will allow you to space and offer a better design than standard shapes.
The container construction material it can be of any type as long as it is waterproofed internally. It is usually used for the external cladding wood at least 1 cm thick. The height can also be variable, but it must never be less than 25 cm. Once the suitable container has been chosen, it is possible to proceed with the creation of the internal garden.
It may interest you: How to build DIY greenhouse things to know
Choice of land
Before pouring the soil, it is advisable to place a layer of stones about a mandarin in size and about two cm of expanded clay into balls on the bottom of the container. These two layers will provide excellent drainage to the soil. Then add a good quality soil for about 10 cm.
Arrangement of plants and composition
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- For a good composition it is advisable to place the large plants behind and the small ones in front. Remember that small plants die more easily and it is another reason to be able to reciprocate them more easily.
- The undergrowth plants will go under the big ones, so as to have a more natural environment for them. Place beautiful aesthetic stones near the undergrowth plants: as well as giving beauty, they will also maintain the right humidity in the environment.
- Always close to the undergrowth plants you can create ponds, the humidity will always be at excellent levels.
- Keep some space for ponds and rivulets, they are beautiful and crucial for a good ecosystem. Fill the entire container to the brim with good soil.
- Flowering plants will definitely go to the brightest areas, needing more light to bring the buds to bloom. You will hardly be able to have beautiful flowering plants if you do not have a lot of real sunlight, so if you need to, put a few.
- Flowering plants should not be shaded by others.
- It is possible to put the plants in your container with or without a pot, it is advisable to put the large ones with the pot but after cutting the bottom, and the small ones without. Plants without pots keep them a little distant from the others or the roots will intertwine, making it difficult to repot or remove them. The potted plants will be repotted every now and then 1-2 years, those with the bottom of the pot open instead will not intertwine the roots and will be repotted much more rarely.
- The plants will have a root stock of different sizes, level the ground so that all plants are at the same height.
- Calculate that the plants develop in height and width, so keep the right distances between them and that they have some space in height, even if they can be pruned, it would be a shame to have to sacrifice them.
Artificial lakes and waterfalls
It is advisable to put a pond of at least 20X20 cm every 70cm. A nice trickle of water is also great for maintaining moisture. To create the pond you just need a glass or transparent plastic container that you will bury. Put some stones in the bottom of the aquarium gravel, fill with water. Camouflage the edges with barks and stones and make the entire perimeter of the pond undefined. Create indentations with nice saxons, it has to be as natural as possible. If the water is cloudy, do not despair, over time it settles and becomes clear. To keep it even clearer, you can immerse a plant that you root in water, it will filter the impurities. Pay attention to capillarity, however, if a porous piece (e.g. wood, fabric, some stones) is in contact with the water and the surrounding soil, it will absorb all the water from the pond a little at a time, and pour it into the surrounding soil. , may be useful for irrigation, but can sometimes inadvertently cause a nearby seedling to rot.
There creation of a trickle or an artificial waterfall it is more complicated: you need a small aquarium pump, an electrical system to make it work, and a water pipe. For the conduit you can use anything waterproof that has edges to hold the water (even a cross-cut pipe, or even thermally molded plexiglass by hand). However, try to create a duct that is a bit irregular, give it a slight slope, camouflage it with stones and make sure that nothing that rests on the ground touches the water, or by capillarity you would find yourself with leaks without understanding where they come from.
The water will be drawn with a hose from an aquarium pump on the same pond on which it will then return at the end of the trickle. In this way you can create beautiful waterfall effects, perhaps by making the water fall on the rocks.
See also: artificial waterfalls and water walls.
Arrangement and orientation of light
For the plants to survive there must be natural light. If your garden is located in a corner of the house where it does not receive direct light, then it is necessary to artificially give it to it through the neon lights.
Choose one or more neon lights, suitable for plants, in sufficient numbers to give light. Keep it on respecting the normal hours of the sun, you can also mount an automatic timer. At least 8-10 hours of light per day in summer and 7-8 in winter. The annual cost of this lighting is not that much.
Garden maintenance inside the house
Water little because the soil is a lot and holds a lot of moisture. Better to get a little thirsty than drown. If any plant asks for more water, give it to them on the spot, perhaps with a nice syringe stuck in the ground. Fertilizer according to the indications for each plant and often spray distilled water from above to moisten and clean the leaves from dust, moisten the soil by sprinkling irrigation water. Always use non-calcareous water, if you do not have it deposit that of the aqueduct for at least 24 hours then use it without shaking the container you use, because it will have all the limestone in the bottom. Wet the flowering plants a little, some species suffer.
Every new plant you put on it, spray it with products against harmful insects, an infested plant is enough to infest them all. Remove the ugly leaves and shake the soil a little with your fingers to aerate it. Often wet the stones near the undergrowth plants. Add soil as it decreases. Refill the ponds with non-calcareous water, if they have algae, remove them or add a few drops of specific product to prevent their formation. If the ponds you have are large enough and the water is circulating, you can also put some goldfish in them. Recommendation: dose the fertilizers well, since, being together, the plants ask for less, and would suffer from any abundance.
Photo gallery of gardens in the house
