Bringing The Outdoors In – Interior Landscaping

Have you ever wanted to have a garden indoors or wondered what it might be like to do some interior landscaping? The HGTV series, Extreme Homes did a special on unusual homes of Australia and New Zealand. In an amazing piece of architecture, the Dome Home located on the coast of New Zealand takes interior landscaping to, no pun intended, an extreme.

The Dome Home was built by its owner and resident, architect Fritz Eisenhofer. He truly brought the outdoors in, creating an indoor garden complete with a swimming pool that gives the home the feel of a tropical rainforest. Aside from this amazing feat of interior landscaping, the home is noteworthy for being built mostly underground.

The entire house is made up of five dome-shaped rooms that are hidden below the ground. The only part of this structure that is easily visible is its bluish honeycomb-like windows, which the indoor garden lies directly behind.

Through The Ages

Throughout history, people have been bringing the outdoors in. Dating from the Victorian Era, Wardian cases were the result of an accidental discovery by Dr. Nathaniel Ward in 1829. These precursors to modern terrariums allowed tropical plants to survive in hostile environments, and they helped lead to the explosion of orchid fever during the Victorian Era.

Seeing as something like the Dome Home is out of reach for most people, consider doing some interior landscaping of your own in miniature! All you need is a terrarium or Wardian case (they are still made) and the right plants. Generally speaking, for a normal terrarium you want to go with mosses and ferns, along with select plants.

You might even want to include venus flytraps or sundew plants as part of the display if you have an interest in carnivorous plants, as long as you don’t mind their unusual dietary requirements. Otherwise, you can put in small plants like African violets or begonias and create a forest feel in your terrarium.

Another possibility is to create a dish garden. To do this, you take a shallow container and select small, preferable slow-growing, plants and design a miniature landscape. Sunset Magazine has a great example of what you can do with dish gardens, and you can visit their website at sunsetmagazine.com.

Just type dish garden into the search box at the website, and you should be able to find instructions on how to create one. Try some of these miniature interior landscaping ideas; you’ll be glad you did!