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Spend a mindful hour with us listening to music and creating your very own 'Star Wars' themed faux terrarium! Registration Required. Please watch for confirmation emails a week prior to the event.
Would it surprise you to know that terrariums were an accidental discovery? The first terrariums were created in the late 1820's by an unsuccessful gardener named Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. Ward lived in London's East End, and at the time it was one of the most polluted parts of the world.
"Ward was a doctor with a practice in the Whitechapel neighborhood, which he described as “surrounded by, and enveloped in, the smoke of numerous manufacturies.” Coal, ash, and other toxic byproducts of local industries befouled the air so much that Ward’s attempts to grow ferns came to naught. But one day in 1829, “a small fern spore sprouted inside a bottle he was using to hatch an insect chrysalis” writes Victorian Studies scholar Margaret Flanders Darby.
It was Ward’s eureka moment. Tightly-sealed glass cases could be used to control humidity (very good for ferns) and air quality (also very good for ferns). Ward’s 1842 book Of the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases and the display of his cases at the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations publicized his exciting discovery. And these glass cases weren’t just for home gardeners, either. The Wardian case became indispensable to explorers sending live plants back to Britain from all over the world."
- Excerpt from, "The Accidental Invention of Terrariums", by Matthew Wills
A Service of the Broward County Board of County Commissioners
AGE GROUP: | New Adults | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Workshop | Health & Wellness | Crafting/Makers | Class |
| Mon, Apr 13 | 10:00AM to 8:00PM |
| Tue, Apr 14 | 10:00AM to 8:00PM |
| Wed, Apr 15 | 10:00AM to 8:00PM |
| Thu, Apr 16 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
| Fri, Apr 17 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
| Sat, Apr 18 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
| Sun, Apr 19 | 10:00AM to 6:00PM |
