Bring the outdoors in

Image by ex.libris via FlickrEarthly Delights | The Slug and the Squirrel Terrariums

"I was shocked to learn that not everyone makes terrariums!” says the designer Jose Agatep, who grew up making terrariums with his father in their garden. Agatep surprised friends with these handmade flora snow globes, and they wanted more. “People started calling me an artist!” he excitedly recalls.


His terrariums, which he designs under the name the Slug and the Squirrel, come in all shapes and sizes and are a recent addition to Anthropologie’s home décor collection. The containers are welded together from vases, bottles and cups Agatep that finds at flea markets and then embellishes with silver. He fills them with plants from a local Philadelphia flower shop and soil and wood chips from along forest trails and train tracks. (He particularly likes taking components from the outdoors because they come with the bacteria and insects necessary to maintain the self-contained ecosystem, and sometimes they sprout mushrooms, much to his customers’ surprise.) “Everything is so … technology,” he says. “We need the nature. It’s a good reminder of how it used to be.”

Easy to make one yourself. Bottles, jars, lightbulbs, glasses... endless possibilities of containers.