Kokedama: the Japanese moss-ball technique to bring magic into your home

I've lived in the same corner of London for the best part of 15 years. Recently I took my newborn to Peckham to meet a friend in a cafe I'd never heard of and found it was once a regular haunt. I felt both a tired woman in her late 30s with two kids and 22 again, and what caught my eye on the table was a kokedama.

Kokedama, which translates to moss ball, dates back centuries as a side-product of bonsai. I remember seeing them hanging outside doorways in snow-covered mountain villages in Japan, holding the tremulous fronds of overwintering ferns. They are simpler to make at home than bonsai: plants' rootballs are removed from pots, packed tightly with dense moss and bound with string so they can be hung.

They featured in the mid-2010s houseplant craze, often containing fussy specimens such as maidenhair ferns or alocasias. The cafe's version was more contemporary: a squat mound sitting on the table, moss plump and home to sprigs of limonium and dried sanguisorba, a non-polluting alternative to florists' foam.