hi I'm Gunnar Scott are you looking for an easy and fun project that can give you a little garden to place inside or outside join me as I show you how to make a bowl garden using pins and chase a bowl garden is surprisingly easy to make the name says it all you take a container like a bowl put some plants in it and you have a bowl garden today I'm doing some recycle I'm taking a glass lampshade and using this as my bowl now this used to be in my closet with a light fixture above it and I really like the design and didn't want to throw this out so this is now my bowl it's ideal in weight and size and it's perfect because where the hole is where it was mounted to the light fixture it's right in the center and it's a built-in drainage hole it's late in the season as I begin this project which means when I finish this bowl garden it's going to reside inside for a number of months there's actually snow on the ground outside right now this drainage hole presents a problem because I don't want any water on any of the tables or surfaces where I display this bowl garden so I went to one of my local thrift stores and for about a dollar picked up a glass plate that pretty closely matches this bowl and so by placing it underneath I've got a place to collect any water that should drain out when I'm finished I'm planning on keeping this bowl garden outside for most of the year these hens and chicks are very durable they can handle cold they can handle drought and in a bowl garden they're shallow roots mean that they're not going to try to grow outside of this container succulents like the hens and chicks that I'm using for my bull garden do have a pretty major limitation they hate extra water on their roots in fact a soggy waterlogged soil is enough to kill these plants so the potting mix that I'm using is one that I've added a lot of perlite and vermiculite to and even a little bit of sand to ensure that there's really good drainage and that way I don't have to worry about these roots resting in a lot of excess water and potentially killing the plant I really love hens and chicks the semper vivo in fact I have them growing in a few sections of my landscape one area is just outside my front door there's a nice little rock that provides some extra reflective Heat I've mulched it with some pea gravel and I really like the selection of the hens and chicks in that area so what I've actually done is taken some of those plants and trimmed off some of the chicks I love this little simpler veve them but you can see that as it grows all these little chicks really start overtaking the area and they start growing right on top of each other so I want to try to remove as many of these as I can I can just pull them out and they'll be a little bit of stem and roots involved but I can also come in and maybe get some bigger clumps by using the pruners trying it out a little bit more and then cutting it and you can see this has some really good root growth on it this will transplant very well so with the chicks that I harvested from my plants outside and the plants that I picked up at the clearance sale I'll have plenty to fill this bowl garden I'll begin by putting potting soil into my glass bowl this potting mix is a little damp that way I don't have to water excessively after putting it in the bowl and to start I just scoop it in I'll go ahead and fill my container almost to the top after I put the plants in and give it that initial watering the soil will settle a little bit and I do want about an inch of clearance from the top to the soil because I'll be placing a gravel mulch on top of it after the plants are in with the potting soil in place now we're ready to put the plants in hens and chicks are ideal because you just prune off one of the chicks and you're left with a little bit of stem so what we do is just take a pencil make a little hole and stick the stem into the hole roots will develop from that stem so push the soil to ensure some good contact with that stem and you can expect roots to develop planting the individual chicks is definitely the way to go but I was able to actually collect one of the hens with a number of the chicks connected so I'll save myself a little bit of time and leave all of these pieces together and just place it in a section where I can spread out all these individual chicks put some soil on top of those little stems and I can expect that each of these chicks will now develop into its own plant and help me fill this bowl garden that much quicker I'm lucky to have lots of chicks that have developed already on these plants if you don't have that many chicks or if you like the idea of putting some of those bigger hen plants into your bowl garden go ahead and remove it from the pot and you want to go ahead and take off much of the soil remember the roots are very shallow and so it's only when I get to the top one or two inches that I even begin to encounter the roots and so teasing apart these roots removing this soil I now have a much more compact part of the plant that I can place into this bowl garden I'll make a slightly bigger hole and I'll place the hen plant with the chicks radiating out from it to fill in the bowl these plants have filled this bowl nicely and I'm happy with what I have right now so I'm ready to apply the gravel mulch the soil in this bowl garden will dry out pretty quickly especially when I place it outside so I want to put a mulch on it because that'll help moderate some of that water evaporation and help hold some water in the soil what I've chosen to use our pea pebbles just a really light gravel for my friends in the UK it's a garden grit so what I do now is just start sprinkling this pea gravel on top of the surface I want to cover as much of the bare soil as I can that will help hold some of that moisture in the potting soil also it helps keep the Crown's of these hens and chicks above the surface if those crowns the part where the plant and the root connect get too wet that can cause some of that potential damage to the roots and even the death of the plant as I put this gravel mulch in place I don't want to cover up any of these small chicks so with my fingers or with the pencil I can help ensure that all of the leaves are exposed to the air and we'll have ample opportunity to grow and these individual chicks that will develop into hens as they spread out even with this gravel mulch they'll still be able to send down roots for the future plans to develop the gravel is now covering the entire surface of the potting soil and these plants are ready to start growing which means this project is complete now I made it very simple for myself with just hens and chicks in a couple different varieties that give me a little bit of texture and a few different colors but the sky is the limit in choosing succulents that you put into your bowl garden and there you have it that's how I make my bowl garden using hens and chicks if you have any comments or questions please let me know below if you haven't subscribed to the gardener scott channel you can do so now and if you like the video you can give me a thumbs up and share it i'm gardener scott enjoy gardening you you