A sealed-bottle garden

Gardener David Latimer, 80, from Cranleigh in Surrey, first planted his bottle garden in 1960 and finally sealed it tightly shut 12 years later - yet it's still going strong...

It absorbs solar energy from daylight, water from the moisture it creates, carbon dioxide and nutrients from the composted leaves that it drops and produces oxygen in the cycle...

After he sealed the 10 gallon bottle with a bung three of the species faded and died, but the fourth flourished and continues to grow... The retired electrical engineer has only watered the plant twice, the last time in 1972 when he oiled the plastic stopper so that it wedged so tightly it hasn't been out since. 

I tried to do this many years ago and failed miserably.  Some details on the methodology at the link, via Nag on the Lake