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Gardening & Plants

Picking the best terrarium plants matters more than anything else you’ll do. The single biggest reason a terrarium fails isn’t the container, the soil, or the watering, it’s picking a plant that was never going to thrive in that environment to begin with. A terrarium is small, humid, and usually low in direct light, which rules out a lot of popular houseplants and favors a fairly specific list of small, humidity-loving, slow growers. I’ve killed enough fittonia and rotted enough succulents over the years to know that almost every “my terrarium plant died” story traces back to this one mismatch, not to bad luck or a black thumb. This guide to the best terrarium plants is the complete plant-selection reference I wish I’d had when I built my first one: what actually makes a plant terrarium-suitable, full profiles of the plants that genuinely work, which ones to avoid and why, and how to match plants to the size and type of container you’re actually running.

What Makes a Plant “Terrarium-Suitable”?

The best terrarium plants are the ones that stay small without constant intervention, tolerate sustained humidity, grow slowly, and match the light level your specific container actually receives. Four factors decide this, and they matter roughly in this order of importance: mature size, humidity tolerance, growth rate, and light requirement. Get the first three wrong and the plant fights your container for as long as it survives. Get the fourth wrong and it’s usually fixable by moving the terrarium to a different spot in the room.

Mature Size

Mature size is how large the plant grows once fully established, not how it looks at the garden center. A pothos cutting in a 2-inch nursery pot looks completely proportional to a terrarium the day you plant it, and completely wrong eight weeks later, once it’s sending three-foot vines over the rim. Always look up the mature size of a plant before adding it, not just its current size, and treat any terrarium candidate that “gets big” or “climbs” as a plant for open room decor, not a sealed or semi-sealed container.

Humidity Tolerance

Humidity tolerance is how well a plant handles consistently moist air and soil without developing root rot or fungal problems. This is the factor most beginners skip when choosing the best terrarium plants, and it’s the one that kills the most plants. A closed terrarium runs at or near saturation humidity essentially all the time once it’s balanced; that’s fine for a fern and fatal for a cactus, regardless of how well-draining the soil underneath is, because the problem isn’t the soil moisture, it’s the moisture sitting on and around the leaves and crown of the plant.

Growth Rate

Growth rate is how quickly a plant adds new size relative to your container’s volume. Slow growers make the best terrarium plants because they keep a terrarium low-maintenance; they might need trimming once or twice a year instead of every few weeks. A fast grower isn’t necessarily a bad terrarium plant forever, but it turns “set it and forget it” into “prune it constantly,” which defeats a lot of the appeal of building one in the first place.

Light Requirement

Light requirement is the one factor you adjust to the plant rather than the other way around; you choose plants based on the light your terrarium’s location actually gets, then place the container accordingly. Most terrariums, especially closed glass ones on a shelf or desk, get bright but indirect light rather than direct sun, which is exactly what most of the best terrarium plants (moss, ferns, fittonia, peperomia) prefer anyway. The plants that need genuinely bright, direct-adjacent light, succulents, cacti, most air plants, are also the plants that need airflow and dry soil, so in practice, light requirement and terrarium type (open versus closed) tend to sort themselves out together.

Open vs Closed Terrariums: Why This Decides Almost Everything

Whether your terrarium is open or closed is the single most important factor in choosing the best terrarium plants for it, more important than size, style, or personal preference. An open terrarium, no lid, or a lid left off or ajar, behaves like a regular humid room: air moves through, soil actually dries out between waterings, and succulents, cacti, and air plants can work. A closed terrarium, sealed or mostly sealed, runs its own miniature water cycle: moisture evaporates from the soil and leaves, condenses on the glass walls, and drips back down, keeping the interior humid more or less permanently once it’s balanced. That’s ideal for moss, ferns, fittonia, and other humidity-lovers, and it’s actively bad for succulents and cacti, which will rot in that much sustained moisture no matter how well you otherwise care for them.

Factor	Open terrarium	Closed terrarium
Humidity	Close to room humidity; fluctuates with the seasons	Consistently high once balanced; runs its own water cycle
Watering frequency	Regular, like a normal houseplant, roughly every 1-2 weeks	Rare, sometimes just a few times a year once established
Best plants	Succulents, cacti, air plants, some tougher tropicals	Moss, ferns, fittonia, peperomia, pilea, baby’s tears
Plants to avoid	True moisture-lovers that need constant humidity, like moss	Anything succulent, drought-adapted, or prone to rot
Typical containers	Open bowls, jars without lids, dish gardens	Lidded jars, cloche domes, sealed glass vessels
Maintenance style	Scheduled watering, occasional trimming	Mostly hands-off once balanced; occasional venting to correct condensation

If you’re not sure which type you’re building yet, decide that first, before you buy a single plant, because it filters out roughly half of any “best terrarium plants” list immediately. For the step-by-step build process once you’ve decided, see my step-by-step terrarium guide.

Best Terrarium Plants for Closed, Humid Terrariums

The best terrarium plants for a closed build are humidity-tolerant, slow-growing, and shade-adapted, moss, small ferns, fittonia, peperomia, pilea, baby’s tears, and creeping fig cover almost every closed-terrarium build I’ve done or seen work well. Below is a deeper look at each, including the specific varieties within each group that behave differently enough to matter.

Moss

Moss is the single most forgiving of the best terrarium plants and the best starting point for a first build, because it has no true roots to rot, tolerates a wide humidity range, and needs no feeding at all. “Moss” isn’t one plant, though, a few types show up regularly in terrariums and behave a little differently:

• Cushion moss (Leucobryum) – grows in dense, rounded clumps, holds its shape well as a standalone accent rather than a flat carpet.
• Sheet moss (Hypnum and similar) – grows flat and spreads sideways, the best choice when you want a continuous green “lawn” across the terrarium floor.
• Mood moss (Dicranum) – a taller, more textured moss that reads almost fern-like from a distance; good for adding height variation without adding a second plant.
• Java moss (Taxiphyllum) – technically an aquatic moss most associated with aquariums, but it also does well draped over damp wood or stone in a very humid closed terrarium.

Any of these prefer low to medium indirect light and stay small indefinitely, which is why moss shows up in nearly every list of the best terrarium plants for closed builds, including this one.

Nerve Plant (Fittonia)

Fittonia is one of the best terrarium plants for its vein-patterned foliage and genuine preference for the still, humid air a closed terrarium provides; outside a terrarium, it’s notorious for wilting dramatically the moment room air gets too dry, which is exactly the problem a closed container solves for it. Common varieties include white-vein fittonia, red-vein (sometimes sold as “Fittonia ‘Frankie’” or similar cultivar names), and a smaller-leaved “mosaic” or “mini” fittonia that’s better proportioned for a nano or small terrarium than the standard nursery size. It wants medium, indirect light and stays compact with occasional pinching back.

Baby’s Tears (Soleirolia)

Baby’s tears forms a dense, tiny-leaved mat that fills in fast and works especially well as a ground cover between taller focal plants. It stays low rather than tall, so it doesn’t compete for headroom, but it does spread; expect to trim it back from the glass edges every few months in an actively growing terrarium so it doesn’t smother slower neighbors.

Peperomia (Small Varieties)

Small peperomia varieties make some of the best terrarium plants: compact, slow-growing, and genuinely tolerant of the still air inside a closed terrarium, which is unusual; many houseplants that tolerate humidity still want some air movement. Watermelon peperomia and the tiny-leaved peperomia prostrata (“string of turtles”) are two varieties commonly sized right for a small-to-medium terrarium; both stay low and don’t need much beyond occasional trimming.

Pilea (Small Varieties)

Small pilea varieties bring leaf texture and color variation that moss and fern alone don’t provide; aluminum pilea’s silver-splashed leaves and creeping pilea’s tiny rounded foliage are both common terrarium choices. Pilea stays reasonably small if trimmed occasionally, but it’s a faster grower than moss or peperomia, so budget for more frequent light pruning if you include it.

Small Ferns

Small ferns are among the best terrarium plants for a closed build, because they’re shade-tolerant and humidity-loving by nature, which makes them a near-perfect match for a closed terrarium’s conditions without any compromise. Button fern is the most commonly recommended terrarium fern because its mature size genuinely stays small; a young Boston fern or a dwarf maidenhair fern can also work in a larger container but need more frequent trimming as they mature. Bird’s nest fern, while usually larger at maturity, is sometimes used young in bigger closed terrariums for its distinctive rosette shape. Spikemoss (Selaginella) isn’t a true fern but gets grouped with them in most terrarium plant lists; it’s low-growing, moss-like in texture, and shares the same humidity requirements.

Creeping Fig (Ficus pumila)

Creeping fig is one of the best terrarium plants for adding height: a small-leaved vining plant that will climb glass or wood inside a terrarium rather than sprawling outward, which makes it useful for adding vertical interest without it outgrowing the container the way a full-size pothos would. It does need trimming to stay in bounds and is best suited to a medium or larger closed terrarium where there’s room for it to climb without immediately reaching the lid.

Jewel Orchid

Jewel orchid is grown for its velvety, patterned foliage rather than its flowers, and it genuinely wants the warm, humid, low-light conditions a closed terrarium provides, conditions that are hard to replicate in an open room. It’s a slower-growing, more specialty choice than fittonia or moss, but it rewards the extra attention with foliage color you won’t get from the more common terrarium staples.

Best Terrarium Plants for Open Terrariums

The best terrarium plants for an open build want airflow and dry soil between waterings; mainly small succulents, cacti, and air plants. These are the plants that would rot in a closed, humid container but genuinely thrive when the terrarium is left uncovered.

Small Succulents

Small succulents, echeveria, haworthia, small crassula, and sedum varieties are the most common and are suited to open terrariums because they need bright light, airflow, and soil that dries out fully between waterings, the exact opposite of a closed terrarium’s environment. Haworthia in particular tolerates lower light than most succulents, which makes it a safer choice than echeveria if your open terrarium isn’t in a genuinely bright spot.

Small Cacti

Small cacti follow the same logic as succulents but need it even more strictly, they’re adapted to arid conditions and are among the fastest houseplants to rot if humidity or soil moisture stays elevated for any length of time. Mammillaria and small opuntia varieties are common choices for an open desert-style terrarium; both need bright, direct-adjacent light and a strictly mineral, fast-draining substrate.

Air Plants (Tillandsia)

Air plants need no soil at all, so they’re typically placed loose or mounted inside an open terrarium where airflow lets them dry out fully between waterings. They’re actually a type of bromeliad, and their watering routine is different from every other plant on this page; they’re usually misted or briefly soaked rather than watered at the root, since they have no true root system for absorbing water from soil. I’ve covered their specific watering needs in more depth in my bromeliad types guide, since getting air plant watering wrong (leaving them wet, especially base-up) is one of the more common ways people accidentally kill them.

Matching the Best Terrarium Plants to Container Size

Terrarium size determines how many plants you can realistically include and how large a mature specimen you can accommodate before it overwhelms the container. As a general guide:

Container size	Rough volume	Suggested plant approach
Nano	Under 1 gallon / a small jar or bulb vase	One focal plant (small fittonia or a single moss type) plus ground cover only; anything more looks and feels crowded fast
Small	1-3 gallons / a standard lidded jar	One or two focal plants plus a ground cover moss; this is the size most beginner closed terrariums land on
Medium	3-10 gallons / a fish-tank-style glass box	Multiple plant types layered by height; background fern or creeping fig, midground fittonia or pilea, moss ground cover
Large	10+ gallons	Room for a genuine landscape design, taller background plants, varied ground covers, and space for hardscape like wood or stone without crowding the plants

The most common sizing mistake is planting a nano or small terrarium as if it were medium-sized, cramming in three or four different plant types that all want to spread. Fewer plants, chosen deliberately from the best terrarium plants for your setup, almost always look better and last longer than a crowded container.

Plants to Avoid and Why

• Anything that grows large or fast. Pothos, philodendron, and similar vining houseplants are popular and easy, but they’ll outgrow a terrarium within months and need constant cutting back, they belong in open room decor, not a confined container, no matter how attractive a small cutting looks on day one.
• Succulents and cacti in a closed terrarium. They’re a fine choice for an open one, but the sustained humidity of a sealed setup causes rot almost every time, no matter how well-drained the soil is, because the moisture problem happens above the soil line, not in it.
• Anything that needs direct, several-hours-a-day sun. Most terrariums, especially closed glass ones, don’t get that much direct light, and glass can also magnify heat and scorch a plant that’s pressed against it in direct sun, this applies even to sun-loving plants that would otherwise be fine in a bright open terrarium.
• Flowering plants that expect regular deadheading and feeding. Most terrarium plants are chosen for foliage rather than flowers precisely because flowering plants tend to want more light, more feeding, and more grooming than the enclosed, low-maintenance format is built for.
• Anything already showing pest problems at purchase. A terrarium’s enclosed, humid environment is an easy place for mites, mealybugs, or fungus gnats to establish and spread to every other plant inside, inspect new plants closely, and consider a short quarantine period outside the terrarium before adding anything you’re not fully confident is pest-free.

Building a Balanced Plant Community

A well-designed terrarium layers its best terrarium plants by height and role rather than scattering them randomly, background, midground, and ground cover, the same visual logic a landscaper uses outdoors, just miniaturized. Taller or upright plants (a small fern, creeping fig on a piece of wood, a jewel orchid) go toward the back or center as the visual anchor. Medium plants with color or texture interest (fittonia, pilea, small peperomia) fill the midground. Moss or baby’s tears cover the front and any exposed soil as ground cover, which also has the practical benefit of holding the top layer of soil in place and reducing how much bare substrate is visible.

Beyond the visual layering, think about compatibility as a community rather than plant-by-plant: everything you combine should want roughly the same humidity and light level, since a terrarium doesn’t let you give one corner more water than another the way an open garden bed does. Mixing moss, fittonia, and small ferns works well because all three of these best terrarium plants genuinely want the same closed-terrarium conditions; mixing a fern with a succulent doesn’t work no matter how good they’d look together, because one of them is guaranteed to be in the wrong environment.

Best Terrarium Plants: Frequently Asked Questions

Can I mix multiple plant types in one terrarium?

Yes, as long as they all want the same conditions, mixing the best terrarium plants for closed builds (moss, fittonia, and small ferns) works well since they all like the same humidity and low-medium light. Don’t mix succulents with moisture-lovers in the same container; one or the other will end up in the wrong conditions.

Are air plants terrarium plants?

Often used that way, yes, they need no soil at all, so they’re commonly placed loose or mounted inside an open (not sealed) terrarium for airflow. They’re actually a type of bromeliad, and I’ve covered their specific watering needs, which are different from soil-grown terrarium plants, in my bromeliad types guide.

How many plants should I put in a terrarium?

Fewer than it looks like you need at planting time. A nano or small terrarium generally looks and performs best with one or two focal plants plus a ground cover moss, since every plant you add is competing for the same limited light, air, and root space. It’s much easier to add a plant to a terrarium later than to remove one that’s outgrown its neighbors.

Do terrarium plants need fertilizer?

Rarely, and sparingly when they do. Most terrarium plants are chosen specifically because they’re slow growers that don’t need much feeding, and a closed terrarium in particular has no way to flush away excess fertilizer salts the way a potted plant with drainage does. If you fertilize at all, use a diluted liquid feed a couple of times during the growing season at most, not a regular schedule.

Can I use plants I already have from the garden or a regular houseplant pot?

Sometimes, but check mature size and humidity tolerance against the lists above before assuming a cutting will work. A small division of an existing peperomia, pilea, or fern is often a perfectly good, free source of terrarium plants; a cutting from a large pothos or a garden succulent usually isn’t, for the same size and humidity reasons covered earlier in this guide. Outdoor garden soil and plants can also introduce pests or pathogens that a terrarium’s enclosed environment has no way to dilute, so it’s worth a closer inspection than you’d give a plant destined for an open pot.

What’s the single easiest terrarium plant for a total beginner?

Moss, without much competition, and one of the best terrarium plants overall. It tolerates a range of light and moisture conditions, needs no fertilizer, has no true roots to rot, and gives immediate visual payoff since it fills in fast. A small closed jar with moss as the primary plant is a good way to learn how a terrarium’s water cycle behaves before committing to a more elaborate mixed-plant build.

Can terrarium plants flower?

A few can, but most lists of the best terrarium plants lean heavily toward foliage plants on purpose, since flowering plants tend to want more light and more grooming than a low, enclosed environment easily provides. Jewel orchid is grown mainly for its leaf pattern rather than its (fairly modest) flowers, and most fern, moss, fittonia, and peperomia varieties used in terrariums either don’t flower in typical indoor conditions or flower so inconspicuously it’s not really the point of growing them.

Will my terrarium plants eventually outgrow the container even if I chose “slow growers”?

Eventually, yes, for most plant/container combinations, “slow” only means the timeline is measured in years rather than weeks, not that it never happens. Occasional light trimming to keep plants within their allotted space is normal terrarium maintenance rather than a sign something went wrong; it’s covered in more detail, along with the rest of ongoing terrarium upkeep, in how long terrariums last and common care mistakes.

Once you’ve matched the best terrarium plants to your setup, the actual build is straightforward; see my step-by-step terrarium guide for layering and planting, or how long terrariums last and common care mistakes if you’re trying to keep an existing one alive longer. Building a bioactive enclosure for a reptile rather than a purely decorative terrarium? The plant list and rules are different; see best live plants for a reptile terrarium. And if a bromeliad specifically is the plant you’re building around, I’ve written a whole cluster on that combination starting with bromeliads in a terrarium.