Terrariums: Why we're digging these tiny gardens inside glass jars

Kinoshita created this quirky terrarium with an airplant. Photos: TNS

In a small store window in downtown Tacoma, Washington, there’s an unusual landscape. Strewn across hot white sand like abandoned objects on a Star Wars planet sit a Bulbosa airplant, lime-green moss, and a large quartz crystal. Nearby is a tiny forest, with lush ferns, lichen, lemon-y Scotch moss and, arching over everything, a curly ram’s horn. As in, from a sheep.

It’s the window of Moss + Mineral, a design store/art gallery where Tacoma artist Lisa Kinoshita has lately discovered the old-fashioned art of making terrariums – tiny gardens inside glass containers. Only she’s giving them a spin that 19th-century indoor gardeners would never have thought of.