How to Make a Stylish Indoor Dish Garden
Winter can be a long season for gardening fanatics. Every February, I find myself antsy to work outside and refresh my porch planters and window boxes. But until the temperatures warm up consistently and Spring annuals hit the shelves of my favorite garden centers, I need to find another way to scratch my container gardening itch. Enter indoor dish gardens!
I design dish gardens the same way I do my outdoor container gardens, with tiers of lush foliage, flowers, and trailing vines. While there’s surely a market for those pre-made dish gardens in glazed ceramic saucers filled with miniature houseplants or succulents, that’s not what I’m talking about here. I want you to think about making bigger, more elegant, more stylish dish gardens.
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What Is a Dish Garden?
A dish garden is a collection of plants arranged in a shallow “dish”. I consider them indoor container gardens because they are smaller in scale than what you might typically plant outdoors, and they’re filled with houseplants that are more tolerant of indoor lighting, temperatures, and moisture conditions than your typical landscape plants.
There are two techniques to planting a dish garden. One technique is to remove your plants from their nursery pots and plant them in potting mix, just as you would with an outdoor container garden. But my preference is to simply arrange each individual plant — still in its own pot — within the larger container. There are three primary benefits to this method: first, it’s less messy (no potting mix required in your kitchen or wherever you’re planting indoors); second, it makes it really easy to replace plants that aren’t performing well or simply finish blooming; third, it allows you to mix plants with different moisture preferences because you can add water to each individual pot as needed, without impacting the other plants in the composition. I’ll explain this technique below. Visit my You Tube Channel HERE to watch a quick video of how it all comes together, and watch the replay of my Dish Garden Episode of Planters & Parties on Instagram.
Supplies Needed to Create a Dish Garden
You only need four components to create an indoor dish garden: a container, drainage material, houseplants, and top dressing. I also find it helpful to have a small watering can with a long, narrow spout to reach each individual pot within the arrangement, but any petite watering can or pitcher will do the trick.
Solis Terracotta Bowl
CONTAINER. Choose any vessel you like, but it should be waterproof and free of drainage holes. If it does have holes, plug them and consider adding a plastic liner to prevent water from leaking and damaging the surface where your arrangement sits. Some of my favorite options include footed planters, glass bowls, ceramic trays, tabletop urns, lined baskets, or even antique ice buckets. The possibilities are endless, so get creative — you probably have something sitting in a cabinet that would make a beautiful vessel for a dish garden!
DRAINAGE MATERIAL. You need something to raise the roots of your plants higher than any excess water that pools in the bottom of the container. This will prevent them from being overwatered and drowning. Gravel or decorative rock are very commonly used, but they can add considerable weight to your container, depending on how large it is. For lightweight options, try a bag of small pumice stones or even a stack of two or more drainage discs.
FOLIAGE AND FLOWERING HOUSEPLANTS. Depending on the size of your container, you’ll need houseplants in small pots, typically four to six inches in diameter. If your container is quite small, shop for terrarium plants at your favorite garden shop, which come in the cutest little two-inch pots!
Since I often use my dish gardens as centerpieces instead of fresh flowers, I like to mix flowering houseplants (like Orchids, Kalanchoe, and Cyclamen) among the foliage for a pretty pop of color. For a really organic look, mix plants with varying heights, colors, textures, and leaf shapes. For a more formal look, try the Thrillers, Fillers, & Spillers method that I teach in depth in my course The Ultimate Guide to Container Gardening. In a nutshell, put a tall “Thriller” plant in the middle of your container. Then surround it with middle tier “Filler” plants, and finish with “Spiller” plants to trail over the edges of your pot.
TOP DRESSING. I use top dressing to fill any visible gaps between plants and to camouflage the edges of the plastic pots sitting in my container. My favorites are any type of moss, especially gray Spanish moss, preserved green moss, or sphagnum moss. For an earthy, casual vibe, I let a few strands hang over the edges of the pot.
How to Assemble an Indoor Dish Garden
Step 1. Add drainage material to the base of your container
You want to have at least an inch or two to give excess water a place to rest so it doesn’t touch the bottoms of the pots you sit on top of it. Pile it as high as you need to so that your plants sit at the most visually appealing height.
Step 2. Arrange plants in your container
Water your plants thoroughly and begin nestling them into your container. Take your time and figure out the most eye-catching arrangement. I recommend you start in the center with your tallest plants, then work your way out toward the edges. I go for the “more is more” approach here, so squeeze in as many plants as possible for the fullest look. If some of the plants appear to be outgrowing their nursery pots after a few months, you can repot them into larger pots and use on their own or in a larger dish garden.
Step 3. ADD TOP DRESSING
Tuck moss around the edges of your container and the tops of the plastic pots that may be showing beneath the leaves and flowers. This is just a top layer of camouflage and does not need to be densely packed in between the individual pots.
Step 4. WATER
Check the potting mix of each plant weekly and water as it dries out. This method of planting requires that you water each plant individually since their roots are still confined to their pots. A small watering can with a long narrow spout like this one helps me do this task neatly and efficiently. Indoor heating and even sun streaming through a window can dry out your plants sooner than you’d expect, so keep a close eye on them for the first few weeks. I usually settle into a routine of watering my dish gardens once a week.
Points to Ponder
I’m often asked if dish gardens can survive outdoors during the warm summer months. In most cases, yes, dish gardens like these can survive outside in a covered location. They usually prefer bright shade as most houseplants can’t handle much direct sun. Since there’s no drainage hole in the container, they shouldn’t be exposed to rain that will drown their roots.
I’d love to hear about your dish gardening efforts and questions, so please share a comment below!
All the best,
Steph
PS: One final thought about outdoor container gardens in late Winter: if you’re lucky enough to find Hellebores, ‘Erica’ Heather, and Primrose available during the late Winter, as I sometimes am, read my Hellebores & Heather blog HERE to see how you can use those in your outdoor container gardens.