A kid in love with palm trees.

[Levi adams]

Hello,

My name is Levi and I live in Indiana/USA. I have an obsession with palm trees and tropical climates. But I have always dreamed of growing a palm tree in a glass enclosed area and trying to simulate that it’s in a tropical climate. Some pictures will be provided on how would love for it to look with the necessary tools to create a climate controlled biome. I’m really just trying to figure out how exactly I would be able to do this. 

[PalmatierMeg]

OK, I'll bite. Did you design this setup yourself? Kudos for experimenting. I'm no engineer or genius/inventor but my first thought is you got water misting in but no indication how you will manage with all the inflow and no outflow.

One thing I would suggest is narrow down a choice of small, tropical palms That will require reading/researching/studying literature out there, which young people nowadays detest. Do you have any idea what to put in that box? Not all palms are tropical. Are you thinking of setting up a terrarium?

Give us some idea how you plan to proceed so we have information to process. Many people here know their palms so the more you can tell us the better our feedback will be.

[PalmsInBaltimore]

Lot of information here, sorry for such a long post.

I have an Exo Terra 18x18x24 inch terrarium with ventilation (different from circulation, which your setup would have with the fans; ventilation is just passive air cycling, whereas circulation is active with fans etc) at the top and front. It also has a drain on the bottom pane of glass which attaches to a drainage tube so there is never sitting water at the bottom. Also I mist by hand rather than with an automated mister. I use the ExoTerra TerraSky UV LED for lighting, plus any light from the north-facing window, and use a ceramic heating element on top plus the stick-on heating pad with thermostat on one of the side panels.  

I will tell you that from my experience, temperature and humidity control will be your main challenge, for a few reasons:

-First of all, your concept is very large as far as glass cases go. It will be difficult to find something reasonably expensive that isn't made of plastic instead of glass. This isn't a huge barrier, but trust me I've looked and it's not easy to find a glass case like what you want unless perhaps you repurpose an aquarium or something. But please share if you find something that looks cool.

-more importantly from a plant perspective, the humidity and temperature gradient in that column of air is difficult to get right. I think the LEDs on the sides will be good, but heating will be a challenge. The stick-on heating pads they sell for reptile/amphibian terrariums do not heat up the inside air temp as much as you would expect. They have to be placed on the outside glass and much of the heat radiates into the surrounding air rather than conducting into the glass.

-If you use fans to actively circulate outside air into the terrarium it will drastically reduce humidity and temperature (at least for most of the year inside an Indiana home). If it is heated enough inside, the ventilated top will allow air and water vapor to escape, which in turn draws in "fresh" air from any vents at the bottom or the sides

-You really should thoroughly educate yourself on terrarium substrates, if you haven't already. It is essential to maintaining proper humidity, drainage, etc. 

I use my terrarium for palm seedlings in the winter when they won't like the dry house air, as well as a little chamaedorea elegans and some various terrarium broms (mostly aechmaea) and micro orchids, plus some little things like asplenium nidus and Sinningia muscicola. There's also a bag of palm seeds in moss up against the heated part of the glass. The substrate is mainly sphagnum because it is more for small epiphytic plants like mounted micro orhids and palm seedlings in containers that can be moved outside when it gets warm.

The main problem with my set up is that it is only for juvenile plants or terrarium-suitable plants that will stay small. Palms only fit in that category for a little while at most. I am using it for palms like Licuala peltata that are finnicky about humidity and temperatures in the winter but also grow slowly enough that they don't crowd out all the other plants. My setup is 24 in tall, but you have to subtract some inches for the substrate. One of the broms (the guzmania) needs to come out because it's taking up too much space with the pups it made. 

I'm curious what you will come up with. Definitely do your research and compare, compare, compare the options until you know what you're going to grow in there and what those plants will need in terms of space and so on 

[PalmsInBaltimore]

you can find a lot of ideas on Dendroboard

Plants:

https://www.dendroboard.com/forums/plants.11/

Parts and construction:

https://www.dendroboard.com/forums/parts-construction.12/

vivariums:

https://www.dendroboard.com/forums/members-frogs-vivariums.10/

[Levi adams]

THIS IS AMAZING. This is going to take some time to think about this new information but I was thinking about building this from scratch because there is no way that I would be able to find something this size. I was going to use wood and also tempered glass then for the back section of the casing would be a mirror. There is a TON of research that is going to be needed for this. I’m shocked anybody responded!

[Levi adams]

On 6/8/2025 at 4:30 PM, PalmatierMeg said:

OK, I'll bite. Did you design this setup yourself? Kudos for experimenting. I'm no engineer or genius/inventor but my first thought is you got water misting in but no indication how you will manage with all the inflow and no outflow.

One thing I would suggest is narrow down a choice of small, tropical palms That will require reading/researching/studying literature out there, which young people nowadays detest. Do you have any idea what to put in that box? Not all palms are tropical. Are you thinking of setting up a terrarium?

Give us some idea how you plan to proceed so we have information to process. Many people here know their palms so the more you can tell us the better our feedback will be.

I didn’t create the diagram but I told an AI to show me an example of what it would look like assembled with everything I suggested. The tree I started this idea with was a phoenix palm because they don’t grow extremely tall. In a perfect world I would try and grow a date palm but there is no way that’s possible. I also know I will need to figure out a drainage situation for all of the water…. There is a ton of information I am going to need to take in!

[ZPalms]

Personally I think smaller palms like Chamaedorea species or L. weddellianum, which... even that leaf span would require a large container to really have an unobstructed palm, also P. roebellini can get large as well. Palm in a box is a cool idea, but no point if the fronds are always pressed up against the glass.

[Levi adams]

That’s the one thing that makes me think maybe the whole idea may be useless like you said about the fronds.

[JohnAndSancho]

There's a lot of stuff you can grow indoors without having to get this involved - this is what I lovingly refer to as my Palm Condo™, and it's pretty low buck. I bought a wire rack, a couple of light fixtures w/switches, and a couple grow bulbs. I don't know what the bulbs cost now, I think I paid $15ea for them a few years ago. 

 

I'm using aluminum foil baking pans to hold the plants so when I water, it all doesn't go everywhere. I try to keep the stuff that doesn't like wet feet back in the corner, and I can dump all the excess water into just one pan and then feed it to another palm. It's kind of sparsely populated right now because it was apparently too much light for some of my stuff. 

 

I water everything once a week or so, I mist daily. Granted I'm in Mississippi so it doesn't get nearly as cold here (typically), but there's always a humidifier I can bring in and you could always add some heat mats for bottom heat. 

 

Not that I'm trying to discourage you from building this - there's a whole community of people building stuff like this out of IKEA cabinets and whatnot. 

 

Edit - Oops.  Guess it'd help if I added the photo. 

[idontknowhatnametuse]

You could try finding rare small species like:

Arenga hookeriana

Astrocaryum campestre

Bactris simplicifrons

Bactris soeiroana

Chamaedorea adscendens

Chamaedorea benziei

Chamaedorea brachypoda

Chamaedorea ernesti-augustii

Chamaedorea klotzchiana (This one is especially hardy, there are reports of it surviving -6ºC and having no damage in light freezes)

Chamaedorea metallica

Chamaedorea oblongata

Chamaedorea stolonifera

Chamaedorea tuerckheimii

Dypsis minuta

Reinhardtia gracilis

Reinhardtia simplex

Syagrus harleyi

Syagrus wedelliana