How To: Make a miniature garden with Diana

How to make a fantastically detailed miniature garden

Here at Flea market Gardening, we like to make our own fairy garden accessories when ever possible. Sometimes it’s a challenge. It’s amazing how ingenious some gardeners can be when inventing miniatures for their gardens and Diana Daily is one! Here she tells exactly how she made her fabulous fairy garden in one corner of her garden.

Diana, who lives in Ohio, says, “I made the houses for my mini garden a few years ago using templates, cement, cement sealant and small stones pressed into the walls. They are very rough compared to the ones that my son, Mark, makes and sells now. I love to use a lot of stone in this and try to make it appear as though some of the houses are up on a hill.”

Templates are her patterns that lay out where the windows and doors go. Just look at all the detail she’s created here!

She says, “Be sure to build up your soil so you have hills and even valleys if you can and my best hint is to put landscape cloth under the whole thing or you will be very sorry!

 

Making the Fairy Garden house patterns

The template patterns are made from strips of 1′ L shaped metal that I think are made for ceiling tiles or wall board corners. They are nailed down to a table as well as the windows and doors. You have to remove the windows and doors before the cement is dry or they won’t come out.

“My son , Jeff, is the one who makes and sells the little houses now. My other son,
Mark helped me figure out how to make the templates. His miniature garden runs the entire length of the front of their house with a running stream in it.”

Miniature plants for a miniature world

Diana plants tiny scaled plants like miniature chamaecyparis, between the building and the swing, above, small junipers and low growing sedums and creeping thyme, a fragrant herbal carpet. These gardens are good places for the tiniest of hosta, too.

I tend to move the fairy garden things around every year. I like to find very small, low growing plants for the yards like blue star creeper, thyme, and tiny succulents.”

Start with Little People

One thing to think about when making a miniature garden is scale.  Basically, the size of your miniature people have to match the size of your buildings. Once you find your mini people you can begin making the size building you want from small birdhouses, flower pots or make them from scratch like Diana does.

Diana tells us, “Most of the little people are ‘TOOB® toys’ called Jamestown Settlers. I found the little pond in a pet supply store. It’s fun to make caves with large stones for added interest. I have found that it is probably best to stay with resin figures, chairs and furniture because the others just fall apart to quickly.”

Details

Here, below, is an outhouse Mark also made for my mini garden. I thought the little skunk was appropriate.
This is a windmill that my son, Mark, made for my mini garden out of an old tomato cage.

 

More about the ‘people’ Diana uses:

TOOB® toys are inexpensive and come in all types of themes, like dinosaurs, Native Americans and ‘Mythical Realms.’  They are listed in our Flea Market Gardening Amazon Shoppe.  Click the picture below to see these on Amazon.