80-year-old hasn’t watered this sealed bottle garden since 1972
In an experiment almost 60 years in the making, David Latimer has created the ultimate proof for the viability of gardens in a bottle.
80-year-old Latimer planted the garden on Easter Sunday in 1960 “out of idle curiosity” by adding compost and water to a glass carboy before inserting a spiderwort sprout using wires.
“At the time the chemical industry had changed to transporting things in plastic bottles so there were a lot of glass ones on the market,” he said.
“Bottle gardens were a bit of a craze and I wanted to see what happened if you bunged the thing up.”
He then forgot about the garden for 12 years when in 1972 he broke the seal to add a bit of water. With that one exception, Latimer’s garden has remained completely sealed from the outside world for the last four decades years.
“It’s 6 foot 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,” Latimer says.
“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.”
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