5 Dish Garden Plants: How to Create a Dish Garden

A dish garden is an indoor container garden that will thrive in an area of your home that receives direct sunlight. Gardening enthusiasts claim this type of garden originated with Japanese botanists and floral professionals, who used dish gardens and ornamental terrariums to showcase their work and attract customers. Dish garden planter boxes feature similar colors, textures, and plants of varying heights that you might see in wreaths and flower arrangements.

Consider planting these types of plants in your dish garden:

1. 1. Bonsai trees: Growers and artists have grown and cultivated bonsai trees to display in dish gardens for thousands of years. Growers trim and manipulate these miniature trees to mimic the appearance of a fully matured tree of the same species. You can add other miniaturized plants and figurines to your garden to create a life-like scene.
2. 2. Peace lily: Spathiphyllum, also known by their common name of peace lilies, are flowering plants that closely resemble the petal color and long stamen of an orchid plant. However, the peace lily is a tall-stemmed, trumpet-shaped flower that can add height and levels to your dish garden.
3. 3. Philodendron: These trailing green plants thrive in full-sun or partial shade. Philodendrons produce waxy, bright-green foliage with bluish-gray striations that can frame and highlight blooming plants or day flowers in your dish garden.
4. 4. Poinsettia: These fragile plants are vulnerable to extreme temperatures and inclement weather. Therefore, poinsettia are the perfect candidate plant for indoor container gardening projects. When you plant this favorite holiday centerpiece indoors in a controlled ecosystem, you can enjoy its vibrant green and red foliage year-round.
   
5. 5. Succulents: A balanced, ornamental succulent dish garden can brighten up a windowsill with vibrant colors and uniquely shaped leaves. You can use these slow-growing, low-maintenance desert plants as ground cover in an indoor gardening container or design a dish garden with only succulents. These plants require well-draining soil, sand, or gravel to maintain dry root systems. A succulent garden is also an excellent introduction to gardening since these plants require limited maintenance.

Follow these simple steps to create your own DIY miniature garden for indoor plants:

1. 1. Select a container with a depth of at least three inches. You can choose any material for your shallow dish as long as you can drill drainage holes in the dish and it has a depth of at least three inches. A three-inch depth will provide dish garden plants with enough room to grow shallow roots and drain excess water. You can select a shallow flower pot, ceramic pot, or a terra-cotta dish roughly the same size as a small birdbath to use as your dish garden container.
2. 2. Fill the container with drainage material and potting soil. The bottom layer of your dish garden should include gravel, pebbles, or charcoal. These materials provide enough space for the root systems to spread while still allowing adequate airflow to deter root rot and fungal diseases. You can add a thin layer of perlite mix or top off your drainage material with a thick layer of potting soil.
3. 3. Plant three to five compatible houseplants that will grow to different heights. To create visual balance in your garden, try planting the tallest plant at the rear of the dish garden and smaller, more ornamental plants near the front. This arrangement is similar to how you would arrange flowers in bouquets. However, in a dish garden, the planting strategy should aim to maximize the accessibility to sunlight and increase space between plants. Additionally, it’s wise to prune any plants with overgrown root systems before you plant them to maintain a good distance between plants.

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