"Creating miniature worlds to enhance your world"
Terrarium artisan, located in Richmond, VA
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Ellwood Thompson's Local Market







By David Wilkes
To look at this flourishing mass of plant life you’d think David Latimer was a green-fingered genius.
Truth be told, however, his bottle garden – now almost in its 53rd year – hasn’t taken up much of his time.
In fact, on the last occasion he watered it Ted Heath was Prime Minister and Richard Nixon was in the White House.
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Still going strong: Pensioner David Latimer from Cranleigh, Surrey, with his bottle garden that was first planted 53 years ago and has not been watered since 1972 - yet continues to thrive in its sealed environment
For the last 40 years it has been
completely sealed from the outside world. But the indoor variety of
spiderworts (or Tradescantia, to give the plant species its scientific
Latin name) within has thrived, filling its globular bottle home with
healthy foliage.
Yesterday Mr Latimer, 80, said: ‘It’s
6ft from a window so gets a bit of sunlight. It grows towards the light
so it gets turned round every so often so it grows evenly.
‘Otherwise, it’s the definition of
low-maintenance. I’ve never pruned it, it just seems to have grown to
the limits of the bottle.’
The bottle garden has created its own
miniature ecosystem. Despite being cut off from the outside world,
because it is still absorbing light it can photosynthesise, the process
by which plants convert sunlight into the energy they need to grow.
Lush: Just like any other plant, Mr Latimers's bottled specimen has survived and thrived using the cycle of photosynthesis despite being cut off from the outside world