On a zinc disc-electrode, you can plant a micro-garden by corroding it in a sulfuric acid solution, without the need of a green thumb. You can find the ‘manual’ by three Greek researchers in ChemSystemsChem.

Chemical gardening may be an option for chemists who are not good with plants but would like to have a nice little garden. With a sodium metasilicate solution and some metal salts you can create beautiful gardens in a beaker.

Dimitra Spanoudaki of the Free University of Brussels and Eleni Pavlidou and Dimitra Sazou of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki wanted to make it a little more electrifying. Literally, because they wondered if they could also form such structures in an electrochemical way.