After moving to northern Kentucky in September 2015, I found that our winters were long and cold compared to South Carolina (not bad compared to, say, Minnesota, but I felt that SC was cold enough already, and the Ohio river valley seems frequently gray and overcast). So, I decided that we needed some plants and bright lights in our living room to cheer us up during our long, dismal winters. Instead of just growing orchids in pots, I decided to build a paludarium (like an aquarium/terrarium combination, with both water and land portions). The project mushroomed into a riverbank paludarium (you could also call it a riparium, although there are some differences between the two) with a waterfall, two sub-irrigated planters, and a small aquarium, complete with metal halide lights, a humidifier, a reverse osmosis filter, and an automated rain system. I visited Papua New Guinea years ago, and thought it was one of the most fascinating places on Earth anthropologically, linguistically, botanically, zoologically, tectonically, and in many other ways. So, all the plants and animals I got for our exhibit are from mainland New Guinea (the second-largest island on earth) or the surrounding islands (e.g. Solomon Islands). This album chronicles the process of building and growing the paludarium:
Flickr
A Jungle for a Living Room
Threaded Mode
