Well, thanks to my girls there are two fairies living in our little fairy gardens. Over the last couple of months I have seen some very inspirational posts online regarding fairy gardens (PinkandGreenMama and activekidsclub). I loved the idea of making a garden specifically for a fairy to live in. Now, this may seem girl specific but, think of having a superhero living in your garden, a Smurf, a gnome or a miniature knight. Anything is possible – with some imagination.
I decided to increase the learning, and turn this into a multi-day project. Every good project begins with a little research, right? I pulled out the girls’ Cecely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairy book, and asked the girls to read through and select which fairy they thought might want to live in their gardens.
My eldest daughter selected the Blackthorn Fairy.
And my youngest daughter chose the Forget-me-not fairy.
The next step was selecting our planters and our plants. I have two planters on our front porch that I usually plant with annuals – why not transform them into miniature gardens. As for the plants, we started with grass seed. The grass would provide a nice blanket of green. Then we chose plants that sorta look like trees and some beautiful flowers.
Now, the fairies needed a place to stay…a house made of popsicle sticks. My eldest daughter made the basic design and I operated the glue gun. Ta da! Modern fairy architecture!
These gardens would not be complete without the yogurt container swimming pools. Simply sink the yogurt container in the soil and fill with water (empty and fill on a regular basis or you have a gross pond).
If this was the home of a superhero I would try and camouflage the entrance to the house. Maybe add a garage for the required vehicle.
This project took my girls around 3 days to complete. It has been about a month since we planted our gardens. Every day they check for fairies – haven’t seen one yet. They are pretty sure the fairies visit at night and are gone by sunrise. The girls water the gardens and deadhead the flowers. When you sit down, at child height (fairy height), and look into the gardens they really are quite magical. If I was a fairy I would definitely spend the night. So, the question is…do you have a fairy in your garden?
This is so sweet! I was just pinning a beautiful fairy garden idea on Pinterest earlier today – I love this idea! BTW, I just bought three fairy figurines at Michael’s last week on sale (I think they were $1.50 each) – what a perfect surprise they’d be for your girls to find in their fairy garden one morning!
Creating a fairy garden is one of the ideas I’m saving for that far-off imagined day when I have a girl. I love the house and swimming pools. Thanks for sharing this. I linked you on my blog here: http://parentingtheory.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/saturday-links-plane-travel-treasure-baskets-and-fairy-gardens/
Thanks Liz. A little boy friend of ours made a knight house with a stable! He was so excited to see that a piece in his house had been moved and assumed that a tiny knight had visited! So, it works for boys too! Thanks for sharing my post. Jen
Lovely! My daughter is a skeptic about everything except fairies…she likes to try to spot places they might live! Have you read, “Fairy Houses”? Thank you for being part of the Smart Summer Challenge!