2 hours ago
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I’ve lived in the same corner of London for the best part of 15 years, and increasingly the pavements and parks are layered like onion skins, holding memories of my youth that I don’t realise are there until I return. This week I took my newborn daughter to Peckham in south-east London, to meet a friend in a cafe I’d never heard of. When I turned up, I realised it used to be a regular haunt of mine, and suddenly I was both a tired woman in her late 30s with two kids, and also 22, unemployed and making the most of happy hour.
I bring this up because of what was on the table: a kokedama. If you’re unfamiliar, the word translates to “moss ball”. A decade ago, I saw them hanging outside the doorways of houses in deserted, snow-covered mountain villages in Japan, holding the tremulous fronds of overwintering ferns. The technique dates back centuries, a side-product of the art of bonsai that has become popular in its own right. Kokedama are a lot easier to create at home than bonsai trees: plants’ rootballs are removed from their pots and packed tightly with dense moss, before being bound with the string that can be used to hang them up with.
I’d been familiar with the concept before I went to Japan. Kokedama were part of the mid-2010s houseplant craze, and at that time they often contained fussy plants such as maidenhair ferns or alocasias.
The ones in the cafe were a more contemporary version: the kokedama was a squat little mound, sitting quietly as if growing straight from the table. While the moss looked green and plump, it was home to a few artfully placed sprigs of limonium (sea lavender) and dried sanguisorba – kokedama as a non-polluting answer to florists’ foam.
It prompted me to think about how I could use them in and outside the house at this bleak time of year. On the other side of town, the Chelsea Physic Garden’s Heralding Spring festival traditionally kicks off my gardening year in late January. There, among the miniature theatres of irises, crops of snowdrops rise from kokedama hanging in the trees; a welcome dose of magic at this time of year.
Kokedama can be made at home with moss, soil, twine and a good bit of patience and practice. You’ll need to mix peat-free potting soil with bonsai compost or sharp sand (which encourages drainage) to make a mixture that feels mud-pie-ready. Remove the plant from its pot – hardier ferns are a good bet for beginners, or bulbs in the green – and make a coconut-sized ball from the compost mix around the rootball, squeezing out excess moisture. Wrap it in sheet moss, then crisscross the twine around the ball, tying and leaving some excess to hang it from.
