An Easy Care Terrarium with No Soil

If you love terrariums, or know someone that does, check out Bloomify’s new line of gel-based terrariums that use no soil!

This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience.

I received free product from Bloomify in exchange for an honest review on my blog.

I’m slightly obsessed with terrariums.

There’s something about building a tiny landscape in a container that sucks me in Every. Single. Time. But most of all I love how easy maintenance terrariums can be.

Recently, I came across an article about new gardening products and a terrarium caught my eye. This was an ORCHID terrarium. Two of my favorite garden things in one product? Sign me up! Using the rationale that I needed one (or three) to test out and see if they were worth recommending to all of you, I placed my Amazon order for two different orchid and one Celosia terrarium.


These terrariums are not just another soil-filled terrarium. Instead, the plants are “planted” in a nutritive gel, much like what labs use for propagating plants. If you’ve heard the term “tissue culture”, this is the sort of material that would be used in a lab for making many new plants from a piece of one plant.


The day they arrived felt like Christmas! I was so excited to open the box! Inside were perfect little plants, two in sealed jars, one in an open glass container. The open container is fascinating to me– tissue culture gel typically must remain sterile to function properly. How would this open container not start growing every mold spore drifting through my house?

Care? What Care?

At first glance, the sealed containers made more logical sense to me. Sterile media, sealed containers, the plants should grow just fine as long as the light and temperature is appropriate.

According to the directions, all the terrariums needed was bright, but indirect light and comfortable humidity to thrive as they were for a year or more. Direct sunlight would basically cook the terrariums (think closed car on a hot day).

I ended up putting my new terrariums near the west-facing window where the my Phalaenopsis orchids thrive in our master bathroom. The shower helps keep the humidity comfortable, and it’s one of the brightest indirect light sources in my house.

So Many Choices, with New Ones Coming Soon!

One of my sealed jars, the Celosia, arrived broken. I contacted Bloomify through Amazon and as many Amazon reviewers mentioned, they sent a replacement immediately.

Turns out I was chatting with the company’s owner, Dr. Hsichuan Chen. I mentioned how much I loved his terrarium concept and hoped to share them with my blog readers. He sent me a large Celosia terrarium to try as well as one with a marigold that is still under development. Unfortunately, the marigold is looking pretty sad at my house. He also mentioned he’s working on a miniature sunflower terrarium. I’ll be watching for that one!

But the other Bloomify terrariums look amazing. If I had to rank the ones I have, the celosias look the best, followed by the sealed orchid terrarium (Psygmorchis pusilla), and the open orchid terrarium (Psygmorchis pusilla).

I think my home may be a bit too cool, at least in winter, for the Psygmorchis pusilla orchids used in these terrariums. I keep my thermostat between 64 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Further research on this particular species revealed it really prefers anything from 70 to 95 degrees– so my house is likely just too cool during the winter.

Both orchids are alive, but in the two months since I purchased them they’ve lost a couple of leaves apiece. I’m thinking I may move them to a warmer room in the house and add an LED grow light like one of the ones I mentioned in my post about Winter houseplant care.

I’m definitely excited to try some of Bloomify’s other terrariums. There are three different Venus Fly Trap cultivars, a sundew and an orchid I don’t have…YET!

It’s very important to follow a few simple rules with Bloomify’s terrariums.

If you purchase one of the closed terrariums, you will immediately notice that the cork, or lid of the container has a bit of shrink wrap around it. Resist the temptation to remove this wrapping. It’s there to help maintain the sterile conditions inside the terrarium. If you open it, you will introduce mold spores and bacteria that will contaminate and kill the plant inside.

The open terrariums fascinate me. There is some sort of a clear seal over the gel media that keeps it from being contaminated with bacteria and fungus. The instructions say to avoid touching the gel so that the seal is not disrupted.

When your terrarium plants outgrow their containers, Bloomify also sells carnivorous plant soil kits and provides instructions for transitioning these and their other plants from the near-perfect conditions inside their cozy terrarium to an open-air environment.

These terrariums would make a wonderful gift for any gardeners on your gift list, whether they are beginners or experienced.

Everyone that has seen these at my house has asked “Is that a real plant?”

They’re amazed when I say yes.

A couple of my Bloomify terrariums came along to the MidAmerican Gardener show with me on a recent episode. After the show, the crew descended on the set for a closer look and wanted to know all about where I got them.

Bloomify’s terrariums are definitely one of the most unique and original gardening products I’ve seen in a very long time. I look forward to watching my own terrariums grow and also buying more for friends and family.

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All Rights Reserved. © 2018 Jennifer Schultz Nelson.

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