What do you mean you’ve never heard of an enchanted fairy garden? It’s like the “in” thing right now. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of it…sheesh.

So, I’m the sucker who goes to the local garden place with my soon-to-be 5-year-old and gets suckered into gift section. She finds these cool miniature trinkets and then I take a look. I look further and see that it’s this whole magical world of miniature chairs, tables, homes, fairies, animals. It was pretty cool. They had a bunch of display areas with real fountains and pretty cool designs happening.

So we went about our business and bought our flowers for the garden (some annual and some perennials) since that’s what we came for and then since my Lily was so eager to help me plant them over the next several days, it occurred to me that she might want her own special garden. Why not a cool little fairy garden for her to “tend”, right?

Birthday #5 is coming up in a month so I thought maybe she’d like her own pot and garden that she could play with.

We started with a kit that came in a box. Included was the arbor, chair, gnome, birdhouse, shovel, wheelbarrow and gate. Then we purchased the fairy, watering can and stepping stones separately. Then the two plants were about $4.00/piece and I can only remember the name of the moss plant – Irish Moss.

It should be noted that I told her that if she wanted some extra accessories (fairy, stepping stones and water can) that she would need to use her own money to purchase them. She was only allowed to use half of the piggy bank money since we are teaching her to save so we  had $21 to spend and she was very good about helping me pick out things that did not exceed that amount. A little opportunity to teach money management…

I am not sure if anyone wants to know how this was accomplished – oh, you do? oh okay, well then I will tell you…it’s quite simple actually.

We filled the pot with soil almost to the top. We added the two plants first, next we buried the “pond”. I didn’t feel like spending more money on a store-bought one so I convinced Lily that she wanted to eat those oranges in the pantry because I secretly had plans for the container to be transformed – magically, of course – into a small pond. We added the other accessories, some sand from a Florida beach that grandma brought back as well as some Spanish moss, and then lastly the gate and VOILA, the garden was complete.

Not only was it easy but it was kind of fun to make it. Here are some photos we took after we finished…

(I need to mention here that most of these photos were taken by Miss Lily…she’s got quite the eye, don’t you think?)

Now that we have our own garden I’m discovering all these cool websites (including Pinterest) where people have devoted much time and energy to these rather creative and fun gardens.

I’m pretty sure I need to learn how to transform sticks and bark into cool fairy garden furniture to save some money as well as up the cool factor.

It’s fun, as an adult who’s entirely too logical and practical, to try to remember what it’s like to be a child who still dreams. A child who dreams about fairies and about magic…about things bigger than herself. About lands far away. About a life yet to come. About a life that could be. We have started reading the Chronicles of Narnia to Lily and Ben recently. Ben is not only uninterested, but completely distracted by his Imaginex T-Rex to care about some book that has no pictures in it. Lily, on the other hand, will sit next to me or her dad and listen for a while. She’ll ask questions about this magical land of Narnia that Lucy has just discovered in the wardrobe. She’ll ask questions about what a “faun” could be. (She also had to ask us what a wardrobe is since we don’t have one and so that was kind of fun too). And I love how she can dream big. It causes me to get lost in this world of Narnia too. A land of talking animals and deep magic. A land where things don’t happen as you would expect them to. A land where the good guys win but not usually until you’ve given up hope and shed a few tears. I love things that cause you to think outside of yourself…cause you to think bigger. The fairy garden has invoked some of those magical thoughts for me and I love it for that.

Enjoy our garden. Have you created anything fun outside that was a bit different than your average “garden” space?