Treat Yourself To Some Ultra Relaxing Gardening ASMR And Super Cute Indoor Plant Projects
Ready for your summer OST to be the sound of pebbles crunching into a pot and water gently pouring?
This confirms it: there are endless ways to enjoy the art of gardening, even though you might consider a gardening noob, a gardening newbie, or yes, even a gardening "brown thumb."
With so many therapeutic plus points reaped from engaging in plant-related activities and surrounding yourself with plants, it's only fair to yourself that you find a gardening project that gifts you with these and more!
To help you in the process, we bring you a curated list of our Top 10 gardening activities and crafts we culled from EZ - Gardening, a popular Korean YouTube gardening channel loved by many for its non-messy, low-cost, family-friendly indoor gardening projects.
For even the most unfamiliar with gardening, we're sure you'll find at least one project that speaks to you.
Scroll through the gallery below to discover what the channel has in store for you!
Our favorite indoor gardening crafts from EZ - Gardening
Our favorite indoor gardening crafts from EZ - Gardening
DIY jute rope baskets made from upcycled plastic containers
Recycling + crafts = one of the best quarantine activities you can do! This craft in particular works best with cacti and succulents considering you'll be using a mix of sand and crushed granite for your potting mix. How to achieve this look is pretty simple: take whatever plastic containers you have at home (small to medium-sized ones, like instant noodle cups, are best) and then bore a handful of holes into the bottom so that excess water can drain. Next, prepare a glue gun and dispense a line of hot glue starting from the top (the opening) of the cup, and then proceed to cover it up with rope, one line at a time. Take your time so that your work stays neat and the rope layers are packed densely together. You can add another layer of rope once you've covered the whole cup. Pour in your potting mix, put in your plant, and voila! You have your very own DIY mini plant baskets.
Turning soda bottles into succulent planters
We've heard the old fashioned recycling trick of turning plastic soda bottles into pots for small plants, but admit it - the results are almost always not aesthetically pleasing. But what you see here is exactly the same trick, only elevated! We'll skip the bit about how to deal with the plastic bottle to turn it into a neat horizontal planter (i.e.: not vertically cutting in half), but you can check out the video for more details on that below. You'll need: regular potting mix, sand, and cutely colored pebbles, plus your plant of choice and perhaps some twigs for decoration. (Extra tip: Waxier, sturdier succulents are recommended!). Begin with filling your soda bottle container with the potting mix, and then positioning your succulent. All roots should be covered by the potting mix. Top the potting mix layer with sand, filling up until the base of the succulent (where the leaves start to grow). As a finishing touch, top with some pebbles (white ones are always cute!) for a visually interesting finish. The twigs are optional; some people might glue gun a few pieces onto the sides of the soda bottle container (especially to cover up the end where the bottle neck was), but if you can find other ways to conceal that little detail, go for it!
Framed sky plant
We've heard about the creative ways you can decorate your walls, but have you considered going all out with hanging plants? Hanging plants, a.k.a. sky plants, almost never need water (and don't require soil either), which makes them perfect to play around with! For this indoor gardening project, you might need help with fabricating the wooden frames for your plants (or if you have old picture frames that can do the trick, you can go that direction, too), but after that, you'll be good to go on your own. Once the frame has been made, you'll need to neatly hammer in small nails in even intervals in the inner outline of the frame - this is where you're going to be hooking your thread, yarn, or whatever rope of choice to secure your sky plant with. Once the nails are in, paint your frame - color is all up to you! You can follow a zigzag pattern for how to tie your thread/rope/yarn on the nails for a more secure base for your plant. Once that's done, take your sky plant, clip it between tightly wound strings, and you'll have yourself something way cooler than any other traditional picture frame could ever display.
Indoor mini forest
Here's something your home's resident fairies will love - an indoor mini forest! It's another version of engaging yourself with the art of bonsai making, albeit one that's less expensive and long-term. And, if you have one (or a few), you can use a serving dish from your kitchen that's been damaged or cracked (but was too pretty to throw away!) as your planter. Begin by filling out 1/4 of your container with pebbles. Gardening soil comes next, and you'll need enough to fill up 1/2 of your container. The next steps are pretty much up to you! This is the part where you design your very own forest. There are no prescribed designs, but we can suggest that you add textures and different heights by incorporating different materials (stones as well as smaller rocks or pebbles, leafy greens, hard stem plants, a cute prop or two, and so on). The only thing you need to take note of is making sure your plants' roots are embedded properly and securely into the soil. Make sure you do not plant them in a too-shallow hole, or else they'll bend or topple completely. Using two to three plants is good enough for an uncluttered finish!
Minimalist wire baskets
Wire and plastic - they're arguably two of the most unsightly scrap material you'll have lying around your house, so here's a little something to transform ugly into beauty! You'll need a few meters of wire to complete this project, but that should already be enough to cover at least three to four of these cute baskets that are made with standard-sized plastic soda bottles. The visual step-by-step instructions are explained and demonstrated in the video below. (Extra tip: You don't need tough wire, like the kind you might use for a fence. You can use coated wire that is soft enough to cut with ordinary scissors). For extra creativity points, you don't have to settle for baskets that are simply displayed on flat surfaces. The video for this project also suggests that you can hang your wire baskets on a plywood frame on wall. Soil and plant requirements are easy: a mix of pebbles and soil, and low maintenance succulents that thrive in dry soil.
Hydrogel gardening + mason jars
No-soil indoor gardening is always something we're up for! Check out this really cute alternative to the traditional idea of gardening that replaces soil/sand with hydrogels - little jelly balls that soak up water you can fill up a container with and address all your plants' hydration needs - with triple the cuteness. There are different colors of hydrogels available, so if you're working on this with kids, you might want to opt for the colorful variety, but if you're going for something more elegant and stylish, there are clear ones, too. Mason jars are popularly paired with this because, obviously, they're made of glass, and they display all the awesome things that happen within a hydrogel environment - roots grow and take hold seemingly in nothing, and, well, it just looks pretty cool, overall! Not all plants thrive in a watery environments, so be careful about what you choose to chuck in your mason jar. We recommend those that love to be watered on the regular, like lucky Chinese bamboo, ivy, hibiscus, geraniums, begonias, and if you want to do something extra special, asparagus!
Terrariums for beginners
Terrariums grew in popularity over the last year because they make great additions to your indoor space. People without gardens could enjoy a bit of nature inside their condos or apartments via a vessel that looks like a miniature view of a patch of earth. Terrariums can get really complex, but for this project, we're starting with terrarium 101. You'll need a glass bottle first. Then, fill up about 1/3 of the bottle with a base of pebbles. On top of the pebbles comes good quality soil. Feel free layering different kinds of soil. It's a lot of fun seeing how all the textures and colors stack up! As for the greens that go on top, purchase just a small amount of moss. Moss is pretty much self-sufficient and doesn't require much TLC except for occasional exposure to sun (to bring out vibrant green hues) and water misting. Moisture is key to keeping terrariums healthy!
Open-air dish terrariums
Here's another version of terrariums. Instead of working with bottles, this time, you can upcycle the lids of a lot of containers you commonly find in your kitchen! The lids serve as the base for the terrariums, and the rest follows pretty much the same instructions for traditional bottle terrariums. Start with a layer of pebbles, follow with a layer of good quality gardening soil, top with moss (and other small plants of your choice) and then you'll have yourself a little forest that fits neatly into a dish. (You can mask the lid color by gluing string to it to create an overall earthy feel for your open-air terrarium).
Indoor rosemary patch
Growing edible plants was also another gardening practice we saw blossom over quarantine. However, lots of the projects we've seen still require traditional pots and soil, so this time, we're offering a mostly water and pebble alternative! Rosemary in particular is an easy to grow herb. As the video for this project demonstrates, you can take a nice container (plastic or glass), fill it with pebbles, and then securely place your rosemary cutting in the pebble mix. As usual, make sure the roots and stem are secure so that it stays put and doesn't bend or fall over. And then, fill up your container with water - all the way to the top! Your rosemary will live (considering you give it ample sunshine, too) and you'll be able to harvest fresh rosemary for steaks, pastas, grilled chicken, sandwiches, sauces, and all your other favorite dishes.
Home pond
As the 10th and last suggestion on this list, we bring you, the DIY home pond! It takes a little more skill to put together versus the earlier items we talked about, so perhaps advanced crafters/gardeners can focus their efforts on this. You'll need to start with a medium-sized glass container. You'll also need different sized pebbles and stones to create the "pond bed" (design your pond bed in whatever way you want!). As for the plants, pick varieties that are the kind to, of course, live in a water environment. Pothos, spider plants, small philodendron, and arrowhead plants are favorites for this kind of project. If you can get your hands on floating plants like water lettuce and flowering aquatic plants, all the better - just make sure not to overcrowd your home pond because you don't want your plants to compete for limited oxygen! And of course, clean regularly to keep it looking pretty and mosquito/bug-free (but not too often, so as not to stress out your plants by constantly removing them from their environment).
DIY jute rope baskets made from upcycled plastic containers
Turning soda bottles into succulent planters
Framed sky plant
Indoor mini forest
Minimalist wire baskets
Hydrogel gardening + mason jars
Terrariums for beginners
Open-air dish terrariums
Indoor rosemary patch
Home pond
All stills taken from the EZ - Gardening YouTube channel
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