Once you can keep moss alive, it stops being a plant you tend and becomes a material you build with. The projects below are the things people most often make from it, from a moss ball you can finish in an afternoon to a garden that takes years to settle. Each has its own guide; this page is the map.
What they share is a set of conditions rather than a single technique. Every one of them rewards shade, still damp air and firm contact between moss and surface, and every one of them punishes drying wind, direct sun and impatience. Get those basics from the growing guide first and the individual projects turn out to be variations on one theme rather than separate skills to learn.
Kokedama
The Japanese "moss ball": a plant whose roots are wrapped in soil, bound with moss and string, and hung or set on a dish. A forgiving first project.
Terrariums
A closed glass jar is a near-perfect moss home: high humidity, soft light, no drying wind. Cushion mosses keep their shape under glass for years.
Bonsai carpets
A skin of moss over a bonsai's soil keeps roots cool and damp, stops the surface washing out, and finishes the tree with a settled, aged look.
Living walls
Moss panels green a shaded wall with almost no weight and no irrigation once established, soaking up rain and cooling the surface.
Japanese moss gardens
The moss gardens of Kyoto treat the carpet itself as the planting, with stone, water and a few trees for structure. Quiet, and deep.
Moss graffiti
Paint a moss slurry onto a shaded wall in a shape or letters, keep it misted, and it grows into a living design.
Wabi-kusa
An emersed ball or mound of substrate planted with moss and small plants, grown open to the air or half-submerged in an open tank. A cousin of kokedama from the aquascaping world.
Paludariums
The half-water, half-land tank, where moss thrives on the humid banks and hardscape above the waterline, a green landscape running from the water up the back wall.
Where to start if you are new
If this is your first time working with moss, begin behind glass. A closed terrarium does the hard part for you, trapping humidity so the moss never dries out, and a kokedama is forgiving because you water it by feel and can revive it by soaking when it goes light. Both give a quick, visible result and teach you how moss actually behaves before you commit to anything larger. A bonsai carpet is a gentle next step, since there the moss only has to cover a small surface that is already kept damp.
Projects for the patient
The rest reward waiting. A living wall, a moss graffiti design or a Japanese moss garden all take months to knit and years to look established, and none of them can be hurried along with feed or heat. What they need instead is the right shaded, humid spot and a steady hand with the misting can. If you would rather have green on the wall today than grow it slowly, preserved moss is the honest shortcut, and there is no shame in choosing it for a dry indoor room.