Fairy Frog Plant Island — Build Tutorial

Look at the photos of this frog plants island. Here I want to show how I built it, how it started, and how it became this over the course of about three or four months.

First, let’s look at the current version.Later, you’ll see what it looked like when it was first made.

Below is how it looked when just finished.

The building video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosTzGP-150

How It Was Built

The frog itself is a long, shallow ceramic planter that can hold water. It does not have drainage holes.

I filled almost the entire inside with red clay, about 1–2 cm thick. That’s basically it.

The moss and plants were all planted directly into the clay.

Plants Used

Besides the moss, the main plants were:

• Maidenhair fern

• Begonia

• Sweet flag (Acorus)

• Fittonia

The maidenhair fern was very small at first and almost hidden behind the begonias.

Not long after planting, most of its leaves turned yellow because I tend to handle plants pretty roughly. But very quickly, it pushed out new leaves that grew taller and larger than before.

Again: as long as the roots stay moist, maidenhair ferns usually recover just fine even if the leaves die back.

Plants Added Later

In the first gallary photos, you’ll also notice:

• Saxifraga

• Tree moss

• Creeping fig (Ficus pumila ‘Quercifolia’)

These were added later over time.

I grow a lot of small plants, so whenever I trim creeping fig or divide extra Saxifraga, I usually just stick them into any empty spot nearby.

How It Changed

At the beginning, the frog looked mostly empty, with large areas of exposed moss.

Now, the creeping fig makes the whole composition look much fuller and more natural.

What you can’t easily see in the photos is that the Saxifraga is also spreading everywhere and producing many baby plants. It’s just not very noticeable in still images. I’ll post a video later so you can see it better.

One Thing I Would Change

The cushion moss (Leucobryum) was actually the wrong choice here.

Sheet moss (Hypnum) would have worked much better.

The cushion moss ended up getting crowded out by the other plants and no longer has much space left.

At the time, I honestly didn’t expect everything to grow this densely.