Have You Heard of Kokedama?

Kokedama has become a real trend among plant lovers, being an important branch of the famous Japanese culture that each of you can approach in your own home or garden.

Kokedama is an art in the true sense of the word, the art of giving life to plants and creating an environment conducive to their development.

How was kokedama born?

People have had an affinity for plants as decoration elements since ancient times. So at present, there is no home without at least one pot in which a plant that brightens the atmosphere and sprinkles a drop of the beauty of nature is planted in a place of honor.

The history of this art is not as distant as the art of bonsai, but it has its origins in it because it is said that the first variant of kokedama was black, a well-known style of making bonsai, dating back to ancient times.

This style of making bonsai meant that the roots of the plant grow so tightly in the chosen pot, often round so that when the plant is removed from the pot, the soil and roots maintained their shape and the bonsai continues to grow.

Etymologically, the word kokedama can be translated as "muscle pots."

This new and interesting art developed in Japan in the mid-seventeenth century became very popular in Europe and later in the United States.

Regarding this art, nature speaks for itself because the plant itself is grown in pots until a certain moment, after which the moss-covered earth bulbs become the only protector of the visible roots, these floral arrangements being special both for the interior of the house, as well as for the garden.

How to make a kokedama arrangement?

If you love plants and your home enjoys their presence, what would it be like to try a new and unique project to give your home a special atmosphere and to truly transpose a corner of nature inside it.

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To make such an arrangement you will need plants, preferably small, grown in pots. You will also need a special, clayey soil called akadama (you will find it in specialty stores). If this type of soil is not used, the normal soil you use in the pots when it dries will crack and the arrangement will be destroyed.

The role of clay soil is to maintain a high degree of humidity, thus preventing the dismantling of the arrangement.

You will also need muscles.

Carefully remove the plant from the pot, gently shake the roots and the resulting soil will be mixed with the clay soil in the form of a lump or in any other shape you want. Make sure that the soil bulbs are very compact to avoid further dismemberment.

After shaping the bulbs compactly, make a hole in the middle of it to place the roots of the plant. The bulbs will be tightened around the root to support the plant very well.

Moisten the muscle you have a little bit and cover the lumps with it until it wraps the lumps of earth in a green carpet. Modern techniques use other plants, usually dried, to wrap the kokedama arrangement.

What do you do with the created arangement?

The kokedama arrangement can be nicely placed on a special ceramic tray. However, the arrangements thus created can be suspended in the home or the garden, and the effect will certainly be much more spectacular. To suspend the arrangement, be sure to tighten the bulbs tightly with a piece of string that you wrap several times over its surface to create some balance. The effect will be great.

Don't forget to give kokedama arrangements the water and light that all plants need so much.