How to Create Your Own Fairy Garden

My first fairy garden, Magic Mushroomville, was so much fun to put together. I did learn some things that I want to share, to make it easier for you when you start your fairy own garden.

Lesson One: Location, Location, Location! Give yourself room to move around! I really thought I had an ideal spot picked out for my fairyland, but as I was nearing completion, adding the final touches, I had to find my inner ballerina and grace that I didn’t know I had in me to avoid stepping on things.

Although I love Magic Mushroomville where it is, my second Fairy garden is going to be constructed in a mulch bed around a tree, where I will have plenty of room to work and play. It was hard on my back doing all that leaning and bending. Around the tree’s mulch bed, I’ll be able to lay on my tummy to arrange things, which will probably make it much less stressful than bending and stretching.

Lesson Two: People WILL notice it! All these years I’ve been gardening, I’ve been showing the men in my life around to see if they can tell what is new in the gardens, to point out plants and new flower blooms. And to be honest, I got a lot of “oh, that’s nice”, with looks of feigned interest or silly looks of confusion and “what’s different”. But that’s not the case with a Fairy Garden! My husband Michael liked it so much, he showed it to our next door neighbor Bob, and he thought it was pretty fabulous too! Our landscape guy said “how cool!” The babies? They wanted in there to play.

Lesson Three: This is Play! You can be 56 years old and play like you are 7. What a great time I had creating this fairyland! As I was excavating, I had fairy stories floating around in my head. I named my fairies after friends. I’ve got a Resting Robin, an Exhausted Elaine and a Magical Melanie. I have one more boy fairy in there that doesn’t have a name. He’s the gardener and lives in a tiny house under the bushes next door to the pool keeper. I don’t have the pool keeper fairy yet, but he’s on my wishlist. There aren’t too many boy fairies to be found!

Lesson Four: Save the “good stuff” for indoors. If you buy cute stuff that doesn’t look like it will weather well, use it for an indoor fairy garden. This is on my to do list for next winter, when I have the doldrums. For now, I’m going to enjoy whatever dry weather we get to garden. But I am going to bring in the miniature croquet set. It looks so fragile.

Lesson Five: There is no wrong way! Use your imagination, creativity, and have fun.

Lesson Six: You probably have lots of things around the house that you can use. I just found a couple of christmas ornaments- one is a watering can with flowers in it- some miniature chili peppers, a tall fairy that came with a planter someone sent years ago, and a bench from my Lizzie High collection (that might not go outside). I did buy some flat marbles, but I had a bunch of them already in vases that I used. Do you have a rock collection? Those are perfect for boulders! I lined my pathways with slate pieces I found under our deck. The quartz also was a find around the yard. Look around with fairy eyes, you’ll find lots of things!

I finished Magic Mushroomville on Sunday afternoon, after Michael had stopped at the garden center and picked up a few surprises for me. I decided to name the pool Brookside, but it needed a creek, because Brookside was a creek fed pool with obscenely cold temperatures where I played during the summers when I was a child. I think it looks like it’s missing something, so once the weather clears up a little, I’m going to line the creek with quartz stones.

I’m off to think up plans for my next Fairy Village! Are you going to try it?

Read more from Karen Sandoval on her blog