Free Gardening & Landscaping

Japan is well known for its charming, disciplined and stunningly planned gardens. Many people shy away from attempting to recreate such elegance in their own backyard but as this video shows - it is completely doable! You just need the right plan, the right tools and the confidence and perseverance to see it through.

If you don't have much space indoors but you are still looking for an easy way that you can create a great indoor garden look in your home or apartment you might want to consider creating for yourself a cactus dish garden. You can have a small grouping of cacti or even a larger bowl that is spilling over with a nice array of succulents you can discover how to bring a little bit of nature inside with an indoor garden.

When you combine different kinds of cacti and succulents the arrangements can really look beautiful because of the different range of shapes, colors and textures you can find in these kinds of plants. You can easily create your very own desert landscape. The possibilities are actually endless and are only restricted to your own imagination, so be creative.

When it comes to the succulents, they offer an indoor garden geometrical form and some unique beauty all on their own but they really compliment each other when you plant different ones together in the same dish, bowl or pot. Experiment with different kinds of succulents to create a beautiful and interesting design in any room.

You will need a variety of supplies to get started:

• Make sure to get some very fast draining sandy mix. Often you will be able to find cactus potting mixes at your local garden center and this will work well for both cacti and succulents.
• Find the right kind of shallow container that you think will suit the design you might have in mind. Both cacti and succulents have rather shallow roots so the container only needs to be about three inches deep. The container also does not need to have drain holes if you use cactus potting mix.
• You will also need a small trowel that you will need to fill the cactus dish with the potting soil.
• Have a small and clean paintbrush on had. This will come in handy to help you clean off the plants once they are planted in your indoor garden.
• Don't forget to buy some small decorative pebbles and rocks for the top of your cactus dish garden.

Before you start planting your indoor garden make sure that you have all the right plants together and then sit them together in the container before potting soil is put in. This way you can see how they all look together in the container. You will need to give the indoor garden some focus so try using a couple taller plants to give the arrangement a focal point. If the garden is going to be against a wall in a corner of the room then put the taller ones in the back. However, if it is going to be in a more central location and viewed from all four sides you should put the taller plants in the center of your arrangement.

When you start putting the plants together make sure that you don't overcrowd them. You want to be able to show off the different contrasting plants so give them a little bit of space which will also give them some room to grow.

To put it all together, take the container and fill it halfway full with the cactus potting mix. The take each plant out of the pots they came in and place them in the new container one at a time. Just use your fingers to help spread the roots over the potting mix you laid down in the container.

After you have all the plants in place, in the arrangement you want them in you will then add more of the potting mix and fill up the container. It is important to make sure all the plants are sitting in the container at the same depth as they were in their original containers. Then just very lightly pat down the potting mix around each of the plants and leave around ½ inch of space below the rim of your container. This is to allow for watering the plants.

Take the small paintbrush and gently remove any potting soil you might have gotten on the plants during the planting stage.. Make sure to brush off all the succulent leaves and between all the cacti spines.

The last thing you will do is to add some small stones or pebbles on top of your soil when you are finished planting. This will give the indoor garden a more finished look and it will also fill in any gaps there might be.

When you are done planting it is important to water just the succulents with room temperature water. You should wait a few days before you water the cacti and then only very lightly for the first few waterings. Remember that cacti need much less water than the succulents.