The best magazine
Whether you call them fairies, wee people, elves, or gnomes, it’s fun to design fairy gardens to attract these enchanted beings to the landscape. You may not know how your fairy garden will turn out when you start to design it, but if you’re a gardener, you know that no respectable fairy would inhabit a land without flowers!
Fairy Garden on Wheels
If you’re designing a fairy garden with children in mind, you can’t go wrong using such a child-friendly container to hold your fairy garden plants. This garden designer took what might otherwise be a utilitarian wagon and embellished it with ribbons and stencils to match the flowers, which include dianthus. Another small flower that would match this color scheme is blue ageratum.
A Feminine Fairy Garden
The pink blossoms of Kalanchoe are easy to maintain in full sun fairy gardens (morning sun is best). Although the blossoms look delicate, the foliage is succulent, so the plants can go longer without a drink. If you aren’t tickled pink by this fairy garden, then you can shop for Kalanchoe plants that produce orange, purple, red, or yellow flowers.
The Illusion of Vines
Any true flowering vine would quickly overcome such a dainty arch, so how can a fairy gardener appoint her garden structures? For arches and gazebos, plant a trailing plant like million bells or sweet alyssum (on the left in this photo) at the base of the structure. Train the plant over the structure, attaching it with some twine or wire. You will need to trim this modified topiary frequently to keep it in check.
Fairy Garden Tea Party
Unless you live in a tropical zone, it’s unlikely that your fairy garden will be in bloom all the time. Keep the garden interesting by setting the stage for a tiny tea party. Visit the Miniatures site on About.com to get other ideas for fairy garden accessories you can make or buy.
Easy Fairy Garden
If you aren’t sure where or whether to devote a special space in your flower garden to fairies, then don’t! You can set up a temporary fairy garden in five minutes by placing the contents of a fairy garden kit in a part of your garden that has low-growing, blooming plants. If you don’t find a complete kit, then buy or make the two essential accessories: a fairy, and a fairy dwelling.
Elves Among Us
You might consider elves and gnomes to be the masculine counterparts to fairies. If you want your fairy garden to appeal to the little boys in your life, choose a rugged flowering ground cover that will rebound from their eager foot traffic. Low growing flowers that tolerate some foot traffic include:
- Blue Star Creeper
- Creeping Lobelia
- Blue Moneywort
- Creeping Cinquefoil
Fairy Gardens Contained
If you’re using a small container for your fairy garden, you must choose your flowers carefully to avoid plants that will overstep their bounds. This is a case where you want to pick plants that not only produce small flowers, but also have a dwarf growth habit. Examples include Irish moss, which produces white flowers, and Mount Atlas daisy, with fern-like foliage and tiny daisy blooms.
Miniature Flowers for Fairies
When you grow miniature and dwarf varieties of your favorite flowers, provide them with the proper care to ensure that you’ll be enjoying your fairy garden for more than one season. Plants like this white flowering miniature cyclamen need scant fertilization and strict insect control to regulate growth.
Take the Fairy Garden to New Heights
Playing with scale is one of the fun elements of fairy garden creation. Diminutive objects seem enormous through a fairy’s eyes, so you can create a forest with a few 12-inch tall specimens. Consider using flowering topiaries to make these fairy “trees.” Lavender and fuchsia plants are easy to train into a standard.
Fairies must find a fairy garden to populate it, and they won’t find a miniature garden amongst towering clumps of perennials. If your taste in garden flowers isn’t fairy-friendly, you can still have a fairy garden by elevating the accessories. Use a stump, a wheelbarrow, or an antique chair to give your fairy garden a boost.
Source: ...