Pick the glass, the plants, the moss and the lid yourself with our terrarium builder, and preview it in 3D before we pack it to order.
Build it yourself - Terrarium configuratorMost terrariums on the shop are ready-made combinations we put together for you. The terrarium builder flips that around. You pick the glass, the plants, the moss and the lid yourself, watch it take shape in a live 3D preview, and we pack it to order in our workshop once you're happy with it.
It's built for two situations: you already know exactly what you want and none of our fixed kits quite match it, or you're buying a gift and want it to feel personal rather than picked off a shelf.
The tool walks you through six steps, in the order that actually matters for how the terrarium turns out.
1. Choose your glass. Size decides everything after it. A 20 cm bottle fits two or three small plants on a windowsill or a shelf. A 43 cm bottle gives you enough room for a bonsai with moss and undergrowth around it.
2. Add the starter kit. Drainage granules, activated charcoal and substrate go in first, in that order. That's the part that keeps the water cycle running for years without you having to think about it.
3. Add plants. Every plant in the builder is a tropical species that likes humidity and indirect light, so any combination you put together will work in a closed bottle. Mix leaf shapes and heights if you want it to look like an actual miniature landscape rather than a single plant behind glass.
4. Add moss. Cushion moss goes down over the soil, holds moisture in and gives the whole thing a floor to stand on.
5. Add cork. Natural cork seals the bottle and keeps the humidity where it needs to be. An LED cork does the same job and adds a small light, useful if the terrarium is going somewhere without much daylight.
6. Add tools. Long-handled tools for placing plants and moss through the neck of the bottle, since your hands won't fit.
While you build, the preview updates in real time: toggle the LED on and off, switch to dark mode to see how it reads on a shelf at night, add soil or a fern to test a combination, and reset the view whenever you want to start a section over. It won't be a perfect render of the final piece, since every plant is a little different, but it's enough to know if the glass size, the plant mix and the cork colour actually go together before you commit.
Our regular terrarium kits are the faster option if you're happy with a combination we've already put together. The builder is for when the space, the plants or the occasion are specific enough that a fixed kit doesn't quite fit: a narrow windowsill that needs the 20 cm glass, a plant you already know does well in your home, or a gift where the size and look should match the person, not a catalogue photo.
It's also the option to reach for if you're buying a gift. You can have the cork engraved with a name or a short message, so the terrarium arrives as something built for that one person rather than a general present.
Everything you build is packed to order in our workshop in the Netherlands. The glass itself is recycled. Inside the box: drainage granules, activated charcoal, substrate, cushion moss, the plants you picked and the tools to place them, plus a printed guide. Building it yourself takes around half an hour, most of which is just carefully lowering plants through the neck of the bottle with the long tools.
Once it's closed, it more or less looks after itself. Water evaporates from the soil and the leaves, collects on the glass and runs back down into the substrate. That cycle is why a closed terrarium only needs watering once or twice a year, and why indirect light works better than a sunny windowsill, which can turn the inside of the glass into a small greenhouse.
Open the terrarium builder and start with the glass. If you'd rather skip the building step entirely, our ready-made terrarium kits use the same materials in combinations we've already tested.
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