Tovah, your book is inspirational!
Nature’s inspirational, isn’t it? The closer you can get to living with it, the more you benefit from it. This is the whole point for people who can’t normally grow indoor plants, this is a way they can do it, and in places they wouldn’t normally be able to do it, like office cubicles and almost anywhere. That’s the beauty of terrariums. Places that have low humidity, like offices, and homes aren’t always that well suited to house plants but this really ratchets up the humidity level.

How many books have you written?
I think a dozen. Some I edited.

What made you write this book?
I’ve been involved with terrariums for a very long time, since I was a kid. I was originally at Logee’s Greenhouses. I spent 25 years working there and married into the family. It’s an old Victorian collection of plants.

My very first book was called Once upon a Windowsill. It was about how we really started growing houseplants. That research led me to Wardian cases and that whole study of conservatories. I always loved to garden under glass and this was the microcosm of gardening under glass. That’s what really got me into terrariums. Someone contacted me knowing how interested I was in this venue and she wanted to do repros of the big beautiful Wardian cases. She did antiques and wanted to do restorations of them. I wrote the original how-to manual that went with this piece of furniture. Over the years people did little conservatories under glass and they asked me to help them out with manuals, so I’ve been writing about terrariums a long time.

What’s new with your terrariums?
Terrariums and I were pretty close. Since the book, because I’ve been doing so many workshops, I’ve really learned a different aspect of terrariums. Really the low budget way to do it, with kids. I really worked hard on trying to find economical and easy ways for people to bring this to children and seniors and people who normally wouldn’t get the benefit of nature.

The book has a lot of very pretty terrariums of plants put in terrariums but I wanted to teach people how they could (actually) plant in them and do the microcosm, little small world. I think that’s what children find so fascinating about them.

Children don’t take care of things, so I wanted it to be a little world they didn’t need to really take care of well, but would chug along. So it changed the way I did terrariums. Terrariums now are much simpler and more nature too. It became so important to me that they (people in workshops) did have nature. It wasn’t just the plants, it was the bits of nature. Every day I walk to the post office and I pick up little bits of lichen-covered sticks. You can find them anywhere.

I’ve been doing these workshops all over the country. When I fly I can’t bring all this junk with me and I ask them to collect them for me. After I leave I always get the email that says, “I can’t stop collecting these things. You’re gone. The workshop’s over and I can’t stop collecting these things.” Children don’t usually look at things like sweet gum balls. They’re beautiful. The word that children have used is “treasures.” Put in glass they can sparkle and they get value.

In the book, many terrariums have plants in pots. What is that all about?
That’s the easier way to do it. I often do it remedially for a plant that isn’t doing well. I also propagate everything that way.

Incorporating nature is the critical thing. I think it makes the terrarium. When I do the workshops I try to make them add that. Usually they get so focused on the plants, but I tell them to find a little twig, a stone.

Tovah Martin: www.tovahmartin.com/
and www.terrariumwise.com
** All photos except as noted are by Kindra Clineff: www.kindraclineff.com