This blog post originally appeared on RTBookReviews.com
Gardens play an important role in historical romance. It’s the one place couples can sneak away during a ball to steal a kiss … or sometimes more. They’re also a source of entertainment, a place for parties and merriment. Living in a Queens apartment with nothing but a fire escape to serve as outdoor space, I have romanticized these gardens in my mind and long for one of my own.
Books have taught me that many exciting things can happen in a garden. Lady Helen of Lisa Klepays’s Marrying Winterborne has her orchidarium where she and Rhys ultimately rendezvous. Miss Charlotte Howard meets her love Nick Gentry as she sits perched on a garden wall in Worth Any Price. Lady Isabelle Fairlyn enjoys an earth shattering experience with Fallon St. James on his rooftop agreed in Elizabeth Michels’s The Wicked Heir. A killer is confronted in the beautiful Harte’s Folly gardens before striking again in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Duke of Midnight. 
Tessa and Max enjoy a romp beneath a tree (thank heavens for the slit in Victorian drawers!) in Katie Macalister’s The Corset Diaries. Nora and Lady Vanessa share intimacies, kiss, make up and more under the shade of a tree in Megan Mulry’s Bound With Love. Clearly I could go on …
But how could I have a garden of my own in a small New York City apartment? We do live across the street from a park, but I really don’t want any errant teenagers stumbling across my romantic rendezvous. Potted plants are always an option, but after a gust of wind knocked my lovely kitchen herb garden to the floor, snapping my poor plant in half, I am thinking soil and light plastic pots are not the way to go.
My husband loves scrolling through Instagram and he discovered Betta herb gardens. I was immediately intrigued. Not only could I have a garden that would be too heavy to be blown by the wind, but I would also have a beautiful fish. Win-win! This made me feel very much like a historical heroine—my own personal herb garden, and a pet to boot!
The garden turned out to be a great success. My basil is sprouting beautifully and Day Man (that’s the fish- Google it) is doing wonderfully. I couldn’t be happier with my tiny slice of historical romance in the big city. If you want to give the project a try, here’s how I made my garden dreams a reality:
Materials/Supplies:
- ( 1 ) 3 inch diameter hydroponic basket
- ( 1 ) 64 oz jar or larger (You can always buy a 64 oz mason jar, but I was able to find an off-brand 68 oz glass jar at a discount store for just $3.99)
- Pebbles/gravel (cleaned)
- Rockwool
- Seeds of your choosing (I used basil –please do your research to ensure that you do not plant anything that will be harmful to the fish)
- ( 4 ) popsicle sticks
- Glue gun
- ( 1 ) Betta fish* (*this is important, Betta fish cannot share a habitat, so just one fish per jar)
- Betta food (such as freeze dried blood worms or pellets)
- Betta water conditioner
Building Your Aquaponic Garden:
- Prepare the water. If you are not using distilled water, leave the tap water to sit 24 hours before you plan to put the fish in its habitat. You can expedite this step by using Betta water conditioner drops.
- Clean your gravel and lay some at the bottom of the jar.
- Use your popsicle sticks to make a frame that will hold the hydroponic basket suspended above the water. Hot glue the corners of the sticks to keep your frame together.
*Once your water is ready, you may proceed with the following steps* - Fill the jar with the prepared water, leaving about two inches of space (you will need to add some of the Betta’s current water plus the basket will make the water level rise)
- Sprinkle some gravel in the base of the hydroponic basket. Add the dampened square of rockwool. Sprinkle gravel around the edges of the rockwool so it stays steady in the basket.
- Add a few seeds to the little indent in the center of the rockwool.
- Free the Betta fish in the jar. Give him some food to make him happy.
- Balance the popsicle stick frame on the opening of the jar. Suspend your basket in water.
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Some Tips:
Buying hydroponic baskets and rockwool in bulk online can be expensive. To avoid this, my husband and I went to a small, local hydroponic garden supply center where we were able to purchase a small number of baskets for what was basically pocket change. We went to Hydroponic Garden Centers on the Horace Harding Expressway in Flushing, Queens. I highly recommend searching for a similar supply store in your area.
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Important Things to Note About Fish and Plant Care:
- You must feed the fish. They cannot exist off the roots of the plants. You can feed them Betta pellets or freeze dried bloodworms.
- You will need the rockwool in order to have a space for the seed to sprout. Dirt won’t work because it will muddy your water.
- Although the plant’s root system will clean some waste from the water, and the waste will in turn feed the plant, you still must replace the water bi-weekly. Sometimes you may have to change it more often. Keep an eye on it—you don’t want it getting cloudy or green.
- Cleaning is simple. Take a bit of the water from the tank and put it in a small container. Transfer the fish here while you clean. Remove approximately half of the water from the jar (more if it was very cloudy). Replace this with either distilled water, or tap water that you’ve let stand for at least 24 hours. You can also speed up the tap water process with betta water conditioner (follow the directions on the back of the bottle).
The results of the project are absolutely incredible. Look at my beautiful basil sprouts!
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