History of the terrarium goes back to the Victorian obsession with ferns. The newfound prosperity in Victorian Britain has led to in a lot of women who didn’t work as a nod to status and had time on their hands. The Victorian era was also all about self-improvement and so these women started new hobbies or to make and come up with things. Collecting ferns was a relatively inexpensive hobby where you just had to go out and find them. It is the fact that ferns lacked any flamboyantly colored flowers made them seem more serious. Fern collecting was one of the few egalitarian hobbies and that was what made it so popular back then.
Like many plant-obsessed Victorians, Nathaniel Ward was a London doctor by profession who had an intense enthusiasm for botany. However, Dr. Ward’s plants, particularly his ferns, were having difficulty surviving the polluted air of 1820s London. It was very frustrating for a passionate plant collector to not be able to maintain his plants. While puzzling over the problem with his ferns, Dr. Ward noticed that the plants placed in his covered insect jars (for studying moths and caterpillars) were actually growing well. It was a moment where Dr. Ward realized that his miniature greenhouse could actually protect the plants enough so that they would thrive. He spread the word of his discovery and even published a book on the subject — On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases (full text from Google), and soon there was a Wardian Case (as the first terrariums were known) in every Victorian home. (Those Wardian Cases paved the way for the orchid obsession that was soon to follow.)
Not only was Dr. Ward’s discovery a boon for London plant lovers, but it also made the British tea obsession possible. Before the invention of the Wardian Case, it had been nearly impossible to grow Chinese tea plants outside China. Finally in the 1840s and ’50s, a botanist named Robert Fortune was able to use the Wardian Cases to successfully transport Chinese tea plants to India, and that made the Indian tea industry took off. By the mid-19th century, the price of tea had dropped so much that it became the most popular drink for all classes in Britain.
Like many plant-obsessed Victorians, Nathaniel Ward was a London doctor by profession who had an intense enthusiasm for botany. However, Dr. Ward’s plants, particularly his ferns, were having difficulty surviving the polluted air of 1820s London. It was very frustrating for a passionate plant collector to not be able to maintain his plants. While puzzling over the problem with his ferns, Dr. Ward noticed that the plants placed in his covered insect jars (for studying moths and caterpillars) were actually growing well. It was a moment where Dr. Ward realized that his miniature greenhouse could actually protect the plants enough so that they would thrive. He spread the word of his discovery and even published a book on the subject — On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases (full text from Google), and soon there was a Wardian Case (as the first terrariums were known) in every Victorian home. (Those Wardian Cases paved the way for the orchid obsession that was soon to follow.)
Not only was Dr. Ward’s discovery a boon for London plant lovers, but it also made the British tea obsession possible. Before the invention of the Wardian Case, it had been nearly impossible to grow Chinese tea plants outside China. Finally in the 1840s and ’50s, a botanist named Robert Fortune was able to use the Wardian Cases to successfully transport Chinese tea plants to India, and that made the Indian tea industry took off. By the mid-19th century, the price of tea had dropped so much that it became the most popular drink for all classes in Britain.