DIY: botanic garden at home

Create your own plant paradise

If you have been inspired by Dr. Nils Köster in Exposé #08 and you fancy having a lavishly impressive plant garden like that, summon up your inner amateur botanist and explore the thousands of unusual and rare plant species available. Naturally you can also adopt a slightly less grand approach than they have done in fabulous Berlin. We can help you get started.

Botanical challenge

Creating your own wunderbar botanic garden is more of a challenge than just filling some windowboxes. So start small. Begin with easy plants or plants from neighbouring countries with a roughly similar climate. Grow alongside your plants and expand your garden slowly.

The choice of plants that will fit into your new botanical paradise depends on the soil. And do you have full sunlight or a lot of shade? Seek out the plants that fit perfectly with your garden. A stubborn plant will not adapt to the conditions in your garden. Even trying to bribe the plant with fancy bottled water won’t help.

Of course all that growing and blooming needs to be done in style. Now that gardening is the latest hip trend, you can find loads of great products for it. The botany-inspired shop Hallesches Hause offers a stunning selection of gardening accessories!

Hortus aan huis: net als de hortus botanicus in Berlijn Mooiwatplantendoen.nl
Exposé #08: hortus botanicus

Getting recognised

Soon you’ll have a sizeable collection of unusual plants, and you may not be able to see the wood for the trees any more. But as a committed aspiring botanist you have a solution for that: labels! Just like they use in schöne Berlin. Every plant there has a label bearing a number, the place in the world from which the plant originates, and the name the person who found or collected it. Obviously you can write your own name on every label: it’s your botanic garden, and everyone should know that!

Time for your plants, time for yourself

You will need to do a lot of work before you have the makings of a green oasis, but it’s definitely worth it. Particularly since all that hard work will certainly earn you the right to relax and enjoy your plant garden. With enough effort, you can create a botanical tour de force featuring the most unusual plant species. You may even be able to charge admission in due course.

Hortus aan huis: net als de hortus botanicus in Berlijn Mooiwatplantendoen.nl