Big potential on a small scale: Miniature gardens are educational, but kids will just think they’re fun

Trenton Sticher may just be 5, but he knows his way around a garden, having helped tend his family’s backyard vegetable garden each summer.

But he was introduced to indoor gardening last Saturday when his mom brought him to a miniature garden workshop at The Barn Nursery.

Trenton Sticher, 5, puts the finishing touches on his garden with help from his mother, Jessica Sticher. The East Ridge mom says she signed them up for The Barn’s workshop because she thought a miniature garden would be a fun project to do together.

Miniature gardens — potted arrangements of houseplants — is a name used interchangeably with fairy gardens and adventure gardens. Mini gardens differ from terrariums, explains Donna Dent of The Barn Nursery, in that terrariums are normally inside glass containers, enclosed at the top, while miniature gardens are not enclosed in glass, are uncovered and use a variety of containers.

Think of a miniature garden as the spunkier, less-formal cousin of English dish gardens, those elegant tabletop arrangements of plants that are favorites for extending funeral condolences.