Best Living Plants for Miniature Gardens (Resource Guide) (2024)

Want to create a miniature garden with living plants? This guide by expert Janit Calvo has all the information and resources you need to get started. Find out about the best plant choices, where to get them, and how to plan your garden and accessories for a creative and enchanting living work of art.

Janit is the best-selling author of Gardening in Miniature: Create Your Own Tiny Living World and Gardening in Miniature Prop Shop. For more tips, you can also find 7 Mistakes to Avoid When Growing Miniature Plants here.

Miniature Gardening Resource Guide

Mini Garden Basics

Miniature Garden vsFairy Garden – What’s the Difference?

A miniature gardenis literally a living garden in miniature. The focus is on creating and growing the garden on a small scale.

Miniature and dwarf trees and shrubs are paired with small-leafed perennials and groundcovers that make up the understory of the garden bed.

At least one “man-made” miniature garden accessory is needed to tell the scale to the viewer, like a birdbath or bench.

Fairy gardensare not as rigid in design and scale and the focus is usually on the accessories and the fairies, and the plants are decided upon afterwards if at all.

It’s very helpful to know the difference when shopping for plants and accessories. Attention to scale (proportions) is essential for a miniature garden to look just right.

Contents

• About Scale
  • Container Size Vs. Accessory Size
• Miniature Plant Ideas
  • Indoor Plants
    • Indoor Trees
    • Indoor Bedding Plants
  • Outdoor Plants
    • Outdoor Bedding Plants
• Frequently-Asked Questions
• Get the Book

Related:Easy DIY Fairy Garden Decor.

Keys to Planting & Growing a Miniature Garden Indoors

• Make it a real garden:Use small trees to add height to your miniature garden to mimic an outdoor garden. Use the shorter plants as bedding plants to create a lush understory by mixing up the textures of the plants. All the plants in your container should have the same light and water needs for the best success.
• Light: Grow bulbs are the same as full-spectrum or5000K bulbsand are less expensive.
  They come in a variety shapes to fit most lamps, including regular desk lamps.
• Air Temperature:Indoor plants are tropical plants that need the temperatures to stay above60°F / 15°Call year round.
• Soil:Use organic potting soil with no added fertilizers or water-retaining polymers.
• Water:Your pot should have a drainage hole unless you understand perfectly how to water without one.
  Get one with drainage hole and matching saucer, it’s just easier.
  Use a good quality plant coaster underneath the saucer to protect your furniture.

About Scale in the Miniature Garden

• Pay attention to the scale of your miniature garden. It may seem daunting but as with anything worthwhile, it becomes pretty easy once you get your head around it.
• It is important to remember when you are starting that the size of the accessories dictates the scale, not the plants.
• Keep all the accessories the same scale so you don’t confuse the viewer. Just like a well-done dollhouse, it is the realism that will make the scene enchanting and magical.

Here’s a video that will help you to understand how the size of the accessory can drastically change the perceived size of the miniature garden.

See Also

21 Adorably Petite Plants for Fairy Gardens35 Best Fairy Garden Plants (& I've tried A LOT of plants!) | Fairy Garden DIYThe Best Plants For Fairy Gardens In 2022 | Harper's Nurseries9 perfectly petite fairy garden plants | Flower Power

Container Size Versus Accessory Size

Here’s another helpful way to be certain yourcontainer, plants, and accessories work well together.

• For containers 10″ in diameter and larger, or for in-ground mini gardens, use the large sized accessories or 1″ scale.
• For smaller pots 10″ in diameter and under, use medium size or ½” scale.
• For tiny pots 2″ to 4″, use the small size or ¼” scale, HO or N scale.

Miniature Plant Ideas

1Indoor Miniature Garden Plants

Indoor Trees

• When looking for trees that you can use indoors for your mini garden, look for plants that resemble full-sized trees.
• Note that you can trim off the bottom leaves of a plant to expose the trunk to make a shrub into a tree.
• You can use indoor bonsai trees in your miniature garden but use them as potted plants so you can maintain them easily.

Here’s my 10 favorites for indoors(you can buy many of them here):

1.English Boxwood– Buxus sempervirens*
2.False Cypress– Chamaecyparis lawsoniana*
3.Parlor Palm– Chamaedorea elegans
4.Norfolk Pine– Araucaria heterophylla
5.Ellwood’s Blue Cypress– Chamaecyparis lawsoniana*

Indoor Bedding Plants

6.Dwarf Mondo Grass– Ophiopogon japonica ‘Nana’**
7.Baby Tears– Soleirolia soleirolii**
8.Corsican Mint– Mentha requienii**
9.Sugar Vine– Parthenocissus striata (aka Cissus striata)
10.Zebra Haworthia– Haworthia fasciata

** Can be grown outdoors too, but crosscheck for your heatand cold zones first.

2Outdoor Plants for Miniature Gardens

Outdoor Trees & Shrubs

1.Just Dandy Dwarf Hinoki Cypress– Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Just Dandy’
2.Jean’s Dilly Dwarf Spruce– Picea glauca ‘Jean’s Dilly’
3.Miniature Juniper– Juniperus communis ‘Miniature’
4.Dwarf Mugo Pine– Pinus mugo ‘Slowmound’
5.Sky Pencil Japanese Holly– Ilex crenata ‘Sky Pencil’

Outdoor Bedding Plants

Frequently-Asked Questions

1How Do I Get Started With Miniature Gardening?

How to start miniature gardening can often be overwhelming with all the choices and possibilities but the best place to begin is to decide where the miniature garden will live.

• Will it be planted in-ground or in a container?
• Where will that container be placed?

Then you can interpret the light requirements (full sun? shade?) and what soil is needed (potting soil for pots, organic garden soil for the garden bed) for that spot.

For mini gardens in pots, choose a nice container that you enjoy and perhaps will match your décor because some miniature garden plants can happily grow in a pot for over 10 years.

Once the placement is decided, you can research the plants that suit that spot to greatly narrow-down your search.

Choose taller plants for the back of the pot, shorter plants in front and at least one tree to make it a “real” garden.

2Where Can I Buy Miniature Garden Plants?

For mail order:

• Two Green Thumbshas been supplying America with miniature garden plants since 2004 and have developed the best methods in the country to ship live plants safely and securely anywhere in the lower 48 or Alaska.

To locate plants locally:

• Check with your local independent garden center using the plants listed here as an example.
• Caution:some garden centers may not know what a “good miniature garden plant” or a “fairy garden plant” is yet.
  Other garden shops may sell you young plants that grow up too fast, or plants that simply don’t look right in the miniature garden. Be sure to use the lists here as a guideline.

Note that during the winter holiday monthsyou can find young trees and plants for sale at your grocery store’s floral department or in some independent food stores, like Trader Joe’s.

3Where Can I Find Realistic Accessories For a Miniature Garden?

For realistic miniature garden accessories, please visit our store where we have been resourcing miniatures for years that can hold up to the weather and rain, and can be easily renewed and refreshed.See them sorted by scale here.

Find possibilities locally from dollhouse miniature stores but be careful to choose items that can withstand the weather and moisture. Other places to look are flea markets and thrift stores.

4Can You Tell Me How to Assemble a Miniature Garden Once I Have All My Supplies?

The book Gardening in Miniature: Create Your Own Tiny Living World has complete instructions or check online.

Get the Book

Janit Calvois an artist, miniaturist, gardener, and entrepreneur. Janit resides with her husband in a full-size house and garden in Seattle.

Inspired by her first miniature garden’s long life and easy maintenance, Janit started Two Green Thumbs Miniature Garden Center in 2001.

She has won many garden and miniature show awards, and her gardens have appeared in magazines in Canada, Japan, Romania, The Netherlands and many US publications such as the Seattle Times, Birds and Bloom and Woman’s World.

Her bestselling bible for the hobby,Gardening in Miniature: Create Your Own Tiny Living Worldhas now been translated into German, Turkish and Korean.

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛