String Garden with Coco peat and fiber

The benefits of indoor plants to our health and wellbeing are bountiful – while they remove and filter numerous toxins from the air, the greenery is also proven to be a great boost to our mood. Give the gift of wellbeing with these kokedama string gardens – just in time for the weekend, we’re back with our second handmade Christmas gift how-to.

Kokedama is Japanese for ‘moss ball’ and involves creating a ball of soil around a plant’s roots and wrapping it in moss and twine to hang, often indoors. They look amazing suspended on their own or among others, and make a great gift for the plant lovers in your life.

Sphagnum and peat moss are commonly used in making kokedamas but don’t fare particularly well in the sustainability stakes, so we’ve switched them for the much more friendly coco peat and coco fibre, both of which worked great. It required playing with the soil ratio however to ensure a mix that would stick enough. Rather than the commonly recommended 70 percent peat moss to 30 percent potting mix/soil, we went approximately half and half – if anything a little heavier on the soil side. If you can’t get the mix to work for you with coco peat try adding a small amount of clay.

When choosing your plant, think about where the kokedama might hang and buy a plant that suits the environment. We chose a shade-loving fern for our kokedama destined to hang indoors. We took inspiration from this handy how-to from Smack Bang Designs, tweaking a little to suit our plant and materials.

A plant
Coco peat
Potting mix
Coco fibre
Water
Scissors
Twine

Method: 

• Shake the plant from its pot and remove the excess soil around the roots without disturbing them too much. Set aside.
• Mix coco peat and potting mix to a 1:1 ratio. Add water a little at a time until your mix is clumping together. Grab your plant and start forming a ball of soil around the roots, adding and compressing into a sphere a bit at a time. Pack it as tight as possible. This step and the next can be a little tricky at times with just two hands, so go slowly and be gentle with the soil ball.
• Grab some of the coco fibre and wrap around the soil ball to cover completely. Get your twine and start wrapping around the coco fibre and ball to adhere the fibre well in all spots. Once you feel it’s sufficiently contained in twine wrap some twine as close to the top of the kokedama as possible and tie a knot, leaving enough length to hang the plant from.
• To care for the plant, mist him with water most days. Once or twice a week sit in a shallow bowl of water for 5-10 minutes to soak the root ball. Remove from bowl and rehang once the plant stops dripping.