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Make A Delightful And Creative Fairy Garden

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The Secret Garden Fairy Statue

You may want to start with a moss garden, or perhaps plot out an entire garden within a flat container, or maybe tuck one away between some large rocks in your yard, but wherever you decide to situate a fairy garden it may end up being as fun and entrancing as any miniature world of tiny houses and furnishings could be! …But with the added fascination that tiny plants can give.

“The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery” ~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton

For starting a fairy garden, a mossy place under a tree like this moss garden would be the perfect base.

Wherever you decide to situate a fairy garden, it may end up being as fun and entrancing as any miniature world of tiny houses and furnishings could be! More Fairy Gardens

Something between making a doll house, growing bonsai, and making a rock garden, the fairy garden communities take on a smaller scale of design and are perfect for small spaces. There are many plant choices with diminutive leaves, flowers, and polite growth patterns. Look in your favorite local nursery for rock plant selections that grow well in your area. Some examples to start out with might be:

Crocus chrysanthus
tiny hoop-petticoat daffodils (Narcissus bulbocodium)
hens and chicks, Sempervivum spp.
Androsace sarmentosa
Aquilegia flabellata
Dianthus alpinus
Origanum amanum
Arenaria montana
Armeria maritima
Sagina subulata
Johnny Jump Up Violas

Bonsai Plants:

Photo by Loren Javier

Yonie′s Greenhaus charming fairy garden

More Fairy Garden Plants and Plans

Fairy houses, furniture, and figures.

The Primrose Fairy Cottage
Beautifully made fairy house with fine details.

Tiny fairy houses, or even larger scale ones can make beguiling projects for old and young alike. Interesting rocks to make nooks and crannies, simulated water with small pebbles in a stream-like channel, or making a cobbled walkway, the possibilities will burst forth as you begin setting up the plan and creating your tiny fantasy world. If you should have need of some inspiration the books by Barry & Tracy Kane are an amazing resource of fun projects and ideas. There are also craftspeople who specialize in fairy garden accessories. I even made a little imaginary digital photo to illustrate what I mean.

Barry & Tracy Kane’s Fairy Book
Meet Tracy Kane.

To create a moss base within the fairy garden try getting some growing tips from Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts and Other Miniatures, by George Schenk (Timber Press, 1997)

Little known fact: Fairies are said to love thyme. In France and England, people often created a bed of thyme to attract fairies and make them feel at home in the garden. Make a ‘thyme seat‘ and outfit it with tiny corner of fairy house made of clay pots and fairy chairs.

Furnish Your Fairy Garden

an old hollowed trunk to create the house
mosses become cushions, chairs and footstool covers
milkweed silk for pillows and bedding
feathers to make coverlets and decorate windows
empty walnut shells for perfect little sinks and bowls
acorn caps to make dishes
Reeds and grasses can be woven into mats and rugs
More ideas to make fairy houses

Another idea for a diminutive fairy theme could be centered around old trunk of a fallen tree. Carve a small platform for ‘fairies’, make niches for moss, foot it with rock garden flowers. Create tiny ladders to various parts of the little garden: to a tree shelf, atop stones, to little buildings. Tiny ladders and twig houses and furniture lend an air of invitation to peer closer for signs of habitation. Acorn cups set in readiness for tea just right for a Thumbelina.

fairy house

Or use a small pond or fountain as the center around which the fairy community may gather, pruning dwarf bushes to make miniature treelike forms. Small ornamental bridges, “stream” made of river rock, all giving the impression of a gardened space made on the larger scale.