How to: Creating a Flea Market fairy garden

Create your own DIY fairy garden

What fairy could resist settling onto a cozy bench, next to a tiny house surrounded by tiny flowers?  Create magical memories, while making a fairy garden with a child that will thrill them and spur their imaginings of make-believe worlds.  Tiny plants can create the effect of a small forest or a mossy lawn, echoing Nature’s grander landscapes.  Add a snug house or fairy door leading into a tree stump and you can expect the fairies to soon arrive!

Why do it yourself?

We, at Flea Market Gardening, are huge do-it-yourselfers….we like making our own and saving money while doing it!  And we like to make things to suit ourselves and the scale of our project, depending on the container or location of your garden. So, although there are resources for buying fairies and other accessories, most of these ideas below are very homemade.

Fairy garden containers

Your miniature garden can be set against a mossy tree stump or inside on a small tray. Use a plastic dishpan, an enamel pan or a flower pot, Fill an old wheelbarrow, crate, a window box or a galvanized tub. Transform an unused cold frame, an overgrown pond or even a kettle bbq into a miniature garden!

Winter is a great time to create the accessories needed to make a fairy garden for indoors or out.  Homes can be made from wood, paved with tiny gravel stones or even made with a river stone. Tiny ‘furniture’ can be made with twigs and twine and there are many sources for fairy figurines.

See how creative you can get,…or just browse this page for a pleasant few minutes.

 

Barbara Stanley
“This old stump is planted with moss, ivy and impatiens as part of my fairy gardens.  Fairy gardening is all fun and no sweat…unlike human gardening! The creative process is so much fun. Once you start thinking about the world from a fairy’s perspective, you ‘ll start seeing fairy garden accessories everywhere you go…thrift stores, dollar stores, craft stores, medicine cabinets, trash cans….”

 

Jeanie Merritt, “Here are the beginnings of my fairy garden. The arbor is made from sticks and I’m going to make a “path” from the house thru the arbor with tiny pieces of broken slate, after I level the dirt a little.”

Where to find fairies for miniature gardens

Sleeping Little Fairy Outdoor Statue

Miniature Fairy Garden Forget-Me-Not Fairy

Miniature Fairy Garden Elf Fairy

Jenny Alexander says, “My fairy garden is finished! This is our old fountain , but now the fairies have arrived. The fairy garden stone sign is from a shop in Hamilton, Ohio and the the pink flower is alyssum. The tall one is baby blue eyes, and there’s some sedum..creeping thyme ..all annuals.”

 

Tanya Goldsmith, “This was the Fairy Festival at McKee Botanical Gardens. I took my beautiful granddaughters and we had so much fun. They are checking out a miniature garden I believe put together by Rock City Gardens.

Helen Eyers, “My husband and I made this fairy garden together. having a wire frame on a wooden base and wooden front. I adhered the rocks with cement. What you see in this photo is dried moss pressed into the cement but later we found moss growing in the yard, cut out slabs of it and pressed that on the house. The moss stayed nice until the heat turned it all red.”

 

Helen Eyers, “I just put this miniature garden door together for my granddaughter this spring.  This picture shows the real moss roof…we found the moss growing in the yard.”

Anita Earnest, “It started with the fairy door on sale for $4. The fairy herself, ‘Alice,’  I’ve had for many years. She loves her own forest in my garden.”

 

 

 Tips and tricks:
Jeanie Merritt says, “For those of you who might like to make a fairy garden in the spring,watch for Christmas ornaments of miniature things that can be used in your fairy garden next year. Christmas ornaments, such as small houses, animals, mailboxes and even angels and fairies, can be purchased for barely anything and then incorporated into your garden next spring. She adds that you might need to spray them with varnish to weatherize them. This is how I picked up a few details for my little wagon garden a couple of years ago.

More tips for fairy gardens

Make an arbor  from artificial pussy willow branches from a craft store. Trim it and wire it into a “U” shape
For boys, make a dinosaur, animal or gnome garden.
With a broken ceramic pot, make a patio for your miniature garden.
Make a gazing ball with a marble glued on a golf tee!
Cut up small twigs and branches and stack them together in a small ‘wood’ pile. They will be ready for making a campfire.
Turn a bird house into a fairy home. Cut a door where the hole is, Add moss to the roof and gravel ‘stones’ to the walls.
Create little ‘crops’ made from bits of Sedum.
Use sheets of tiny glass tiles to make walkways.
Paint rounded upholstery tacks red with tiny white dots for ‘toadstools.’

List of small scale ‘Fairy Garden’ plants

Pinus mugo ‘Sherwood’
Picea glauca ‘Pixie Dust’
Picea glauca ‘Blue Planet’
Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Ellie B.’
Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Butter Ball’
Rosmarinus officinalis
Euonymus japonica ‘Microphyllus’
Euonymus japonica ‘Microphyllus Variegatus’
Ficus repens ‘Variegatus’
Muehlenbeckia complexa
Sedum ‘Mentha Requein’
Sedum makinoi ‘Ogon’
Sedum japonicum ‘Tokyo Sun’
Sedum dasyphyllum Little Stonecrop
Sagina subulata Irish moss
Miniature Mondo Grass
Blue Moneywort
Jovibarba hirta subsp. arenaria miniature Hen-and-Chicks
Erodium x variabile ‘Flore Pleno’ Heron’s bill
Baby Tears
Blue Star creeper
Crassula muscosa pseudolycopodioides Jade “Princess Pine”
Ajuga ‘Dixie Chip’

 

Materials to use:

Glass Stepping Stones  flat marbles
Golf tees and marbles
Small stick and pine needles for broom
Shepherd’s Hook of wire
Fence of Popsicle sticks
Stones for paths
Clay for bricks
Willow sticks for chairs and arbors
Balsam wood for doors, benches and tables
Christmas decor for houses, vehicles and fairies
Tiny gravel for patios
Larger gravel for stone walls

Also see: Jeanie’s enchanted fairy forest

 

Links
Fairy Garden shopping on Amazon  <– All sales through this link benefit our page expenses! Sincere thanks for support Flea Market Gardening.
Miniature Gardening Idea Gallery
Easy dollhouse miniatures to make

Books
Fairy Gardens: A Guide to Growing an Enchanted Miniature World
Miniature Garden Guidebook: For Beautiful Rock Gardens, Container Plantings, Bonsai, Garden Railways
Fairy Houses of the Maine Coast