I would make any excuse to go to Brooklyn these days, a hub of creativity, urban farms, and great food. So I jumped at the chance to attend the recent Etsy Labs event, Hands-On: Dirt.

There were no plants on hand, but plenty of stones and mosses to offer contrast and texture.

I brought a friend with me and my own glass orb as Kimberly Sevilla of Brooklyn’s Rose Red and Lavender was on hand leading terrarium and seed bomb-making workshops. Loved getting my hands dirty making seed bombs, and the whole process gave me a cool idea that I will be posting about soon!

Recipe from Gardening Know How. 

Britta Riley of Windowfarms was there displaying their newest hanging plant systems. If like many city dwellers, you want to garden but lack access to an outdoor space, Windowfarms makes vertical hydroponic platforms that allow you to grow up to 32 vegetable plants year-round in a typical apartment window.

New York City non-profit, Just Food, which connects communities and local farms, was sharing information about finding a neighborhood CSA, and Compost for Brooklyn chatted about urban composting techniques.

I wanted this orange jumpsuit: Picking up scraps from Etsy Labs to cycle over for recycling. 

Etsy knows how to throw a party: if there wasn’t enough to do in one evening, they also had a Magnolia Photo Booth where we had our photos taken hamming it up–what great fun!

Just being inside the Etsy Labs space was enough to stimulate my creative juices. And although I never ever win anything, I entered the raffle for a living wall planter from Woolly Pockets. I didn’t win. I did however return home with lots of ideas, my completed moss terrarium, and my seed bomb, which I plant to toss this weekend into a bare plant-deprived spot.