Tired of the usual succulent arrangement you see on your tabletop? Want something unique, fun, and interesting? Have you ever heard of a tabletop mini succulent garden? Basically, it’s an arrangement of succulents but designed as a miniature garden in a large terracotta. You can put it on your foyer, your dining room table, your living room center table, or even in your outdoor garden. These tabletop miniature gardens are so addicting to arrange and they make for a great conversation starter.
First, what you need are 12-inch terracotta pot saucer (with or without drainage holes), cactus mix potting soil, miniature garden furnishings (arbor, chair, wheelbarrow, urn, cat, and dog), tiny pebbles or crushed rocks, and succulents with small leaves such as Crassula Tetragona, sedums, small-stacked crassulas, and Sedum rubrotinctum.
You can get all these materials from your local gardening shop or hardware. Most of these can be found under the gardening section. As for the succulents, you can pick them up from your favorite succulent store or you can find all of these available online. Simply place the order and wait for the delivery guy to drop off your succulent plants. Just remind the seller to pack the plants as securely as possible, so that they won’t lose any leaves or break off any stem.
1. Fill the pot with soil.
Clean the succulents pot and make sure that there are no broken areas. If there are no draining holes, drill small holes at the bottom of the pot, so you can water the succulents. It doesn’t have to be too many holes. Just a few small ones will do; enough to drain the water off the arrangement. Fill the terracotta pot with potting mix up to ½ inch below the rim. Next, secure the miniature arbor about an inch inside the rim of the saucer.
2. Create the pathway.
Using the finely crushed rocks or the pebbles, create a pathway from the edge of the pot and down to the middle of the arbor to the other side of the saucer. Just think about your own pathway in your garden at home and you should be fine. Don’t be afraid about not perfecting it the first time because you can always adjust the “pathway.”
3. Add the plants.
If you are growing succulents at home, simply pinch the top-half inch of the plants so you can insert their rosettes or tips into the soil. Do not put the plants on your “pathway.” Rather, place them between the pathway and the rim, creating a lush greenery that surrounds your little arbor.
4. Put the accents.
Finally, make the tabletop miniature garden look more realistic by adding accents such as a cat sitting on a bench, the wheelbarrow, a dog sitting beside the arbor, etc. You can be as creative as you want to be when it comes to using accents for a miniature garden. You can also pattern your tabletop miniature garden after your very own outdoor garden. Just find miniature accents that look exactly like the things you have scattered around your garden.
