All Fairy Gardens Start Out Small for Fairies and Their Gardeners

Summary: Spring launch dates and summer maintenance schedules let fairies and their gardeners in free for fall and winter colors and textures in fairy gardens.

fairy garden at Meadowlark Botanic Gardens, 95-acres of ornamental display gardens, operated by Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA), in Vienna, northern Virginia: DC Gardens (dc_gardens), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Containers, garden corners and weed patches are places for adults and children to build and enjoy fairy gardens, according to a video, with text, Mar. 10, 2016, on the Featured Garden website.

Barrels, baskets, bottles, bowls, boxes, planters, pots, terraria, trays, troughs, tubs and Wardian cases become candidates since any container that supports plant growth tolerates fairy gardening. Corners of indoor gardens can attract fairy gardeners, as much as bonsai and houseplant cultivators, from niches in back and front lawns and in outdoor gardens. Bare patches in fields, gardens, lawns, meadows, roadside ditches, vacant lots, waste areas and yards deserve to be embellished with fairy-sized vegetation requiring equally fairy-sized work.

Cas, author of the blog and Facebook page Clutterbug Me, emphasizes that fairy gardeners “can’t wait to add” to “magical” gardening “on a really small budget!”

Fairy gardens generally follow countryside, fantastic or woodland themes in terms of fairy-sized homemade or store-bought accessories, buildings and furnishings and of fairy-sized paths and plants.

Lesley Shepherd, miniatures expert on the About Home section of the About.com website, gives examples of chairs and tables made with dried grasses and twig bits. She happens to suspect that “fairies sleep in hammocks woven by spiders” but permits grassy, mossy mattresses on twig beds for gardeners squeamish of fairy spiders. Her fairy garden is ecologically friendly and environmentally correct in recycling acorn shells into coffee and tea sets and moss-upholstered walnut shells into fairy reading chairs.

Small particles of gravel and sand join tiny pieces of pebbles and rocks to harmonize natural entrances and exits with fairy worlds poster-perfect for organic gardening.

Ground-hugging ferns, lichens, mosses and mushrooms keep company with dwarf varieties of bushes, shrubs and trees and with miniature forms of flowering plants in fairy gardens.

Baby’s tears, creeping fig, creeping phlox, creeping thyme, mosses and overlapping pieces of lichen-covered bark leave containers and soils ground-covered expanses for fairy structures and vegetation. Fairy gardeners manage three-layered landscapes advocated by Doug Tallamy, professor at the University of Delaware in Newark, and by Garden Media Group of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. They need angel vines and variegated ivies for climbers, ferns for trees, goldfish plants and lipstick plants for bushes and polka-dot plants for shrubs in fairylands.

Otherwise, ferns occupy above-ground, below-canopy layers with aloe, alyssum, anemone, hosta, houseleeks, kalanchoe, licorice plants, lobelia, oregano, pansies, plumed asparagus, poinsettia, roses, sedum, spearmint and violets.

Bonsai gardening provides dwarf deciduous and miniature coniferous and evergreen woody plants that fit into fairy gardens even though pruning schedules make fairy gardening more labor-intensive.

Cherry, crabapple, golden chain and wisteria qualify as beautiful bloomers in bonsai and fairy gardens while cotoneaster gives bonsai and fairy gardeners autumnal berries and foliage. Ash, birch, hazelnut, hornbeam, horse chestnut, maple, oak, sycamore and walnut and cedar, fir, juniper, pine and spruce remain respectively favorite deciduous and coniferous woody plants. Location of fairy plants on tree stumps and selection of such ancient woody lineages as cycads and gingko stress timeless existences and timely appeals of fairies.

Fairy gardens tend to get the most attention in spring and summer even though fall and winter colors and textures make fairy gardening’s ageless attractions year-round.

Fairy gardens thrive in indoor and outdoor locations: Garden Club of VA @gcvirginia via Twitter April 30, 2014

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

fairy gardens: DC Gardens (dc_gardens), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcgardens/14733097057/

Fairy gardens thrive in indoor and outdoor locations: Garden Club of VA‏ @gcvirginia via Twitter April 29, 2014, @ https://twitter.com/gcvirginia/status/461331334418685952

For further information:

@Dmin. 9 March 2016. “How To Make a DIY Fairy Garden.” Featured Garden.
Available @ http://featuredgarden.com/how-to-make-a-diy-fairy-garden/

Bawden-Davis, Julie; and Turner, Beverly. 2013. Fairy Gardening: Creating Your Own Magical Miniature Garden. New York City, NY: Skyhorse Publishing.

ClutterBug. "How to make a DIY Fairy Garden." YouTube. June 22, 2015.
Available @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyVv6IcxEco

Garden Club of VA‏ @gcvirginia. 29 April 2014. "Fairy garden on the Fairfax tour." Twitter. April 29, 2014.
Available @ https://twitter.com/gcvirginia/status/461331334418685952

Kuskowski, Alex. 2015. Super Simple Fairy Gardens: A Kid’s Guide to Gardening. Edina, MN: ABDO Publishing Company.

Shepherd, Lesley. “Use Twigs to Make Rustic Furniture for Fairy Gardens.” About.com > About Home > Miniatures > Living Miniatures – Tiny Plants and Animals.
Available @ http://miniatures.about.com/od/livingminiatures/tp/Use-Twigs-To-Make-Rustic-Furniture-For-Fairy-Gardens.htm