“Leave room in your garden for the fairies to dance.”
My 4 year old, Annie, and her bestie next door have the most amazing imaginations. They have spent the summer outside together cooking in our mud kitchen, making “perfume”, casting spells, and most of all, playing with their fairy gardens.
We are blessed to have great friends living next door, and my neighbor’s yard and garden in magical in itself. Tucked in between her lawn of clover is a path for the girls to take between our two homes, complete with fairy homes, toadstool mushrooms and fanciful gnomes.
I however, do not have a green thumb, and although I try hard every year to add color to my yard and to keep things alive, gardening is not something that comes naturally to me. I wanted to contribute to the magic, and decided to create a little fairy garden oasis on our porch where the girls often play. It is small and manageable, and in all honestly, the flowers may soon be replaced with faux succulents or silk flowers, as the summer heat is already beginning to take a toll on my rookie gardening attempts.
I decided a container garden was my best bet, so I picked up a large whiskey barrel at Home Depot, and a few fun annuals, which I thought looked whimsical enough to conjure fairies. Then I started with the planting.
Next, I scoped out Michael’s online for some fun fairy homes and accessories. The ones I found happened to be on clearance and on sale (score!). These specific ones, sadly, are no longer available online, but most craft stores, Etsy, and amazon carry similar items, and I’ll be sure to link some similar finds below.
If you do an online search for “fairy gardens” you will find there are a million different ideas for ways that you can put one together. And there is no wrong way. It is such a cute and relatively easy project, and, even as a non-gardener, something you really can’t mess up.
Once I had my houses and accessories I got to work plopping down my bigger items first. I found that small stones, and mosses are a fun way to fill in any empty spaces you are left with. You can really be creative here and use anything you find or have on hand!
As someone who loves to decorate and create things, I have to tell you that I may have had more fun making this tiny oasis than the girls do playing with it. It adds so much charm to our porch, and definitely adds a little “summer magic”. As the seasons change I will add in little nods to back to school (hopefully!), then maybe a miniature pumpkin patch and a ghost or two for Halloween.
Fairy gardens are so cute, so sweet, and a fun way to add a little charm and magic to your outdoor (or indoor) space. But be warned, there is surprisingly a really wide world of miniature decor out there that I never knew existed (think tiny sized ginger jar pillows, charcuterie boards, and even fairy/doll sized federal mirrors) and you could really go down a rabbit hole with this project if you are anything like me.
Here are some fun fairy finds to help inspire you, if you are looking to add to, or build your own….
(Contains affiliate links)
And even further down the rabbit hole……
