Slumberland

Late last summer, I had an empty space in my yard. Under the living room window, behind the rose bushes, there used to be a ton of marigolds, which sounds nice, but they grew like weeds in that space and looked horrible after they finished blooming. So my housemate dug ’em all out, and there was an empty patch of dirt where they had been. That was in late August.

I had an inspiration to turn the space into a permanent outdoor miniature garden, or “fairy garden.” Eight months later, this is what it looks like now, in April 2016:

It’s still a work in progress, and there are lots of things planned for it. But I’m pretty happy with it so far. It contains a garden conservatory, a gazebo, several houses, a miniature “Airstream” travel trailer, a small “creek”, lots of plants and moss that are slowly filling in the empty spots, a cemetery, and a tiny, tiny greenhouse containing tiny, tiny seed packets, tools, and potted plants.

The best thing about it is that it is solar-powered! At night, the houses light up, one by one as the “fairies” arrive home. There are also some “street lights” (actually solar path lights).

The second best thing about it is that doing this was cheap! If you go to a garden center (or even Jo-Ann’s) and buy a lot of fairy garden stuff, it will cost you an arm and a leg. But most of what is in my garden I either found at Goodwill, or made myself. There are a few things that don’t fit in that category, but most of those I customized in some way as well.

The conservatory building? Goodwill. The gazebo? Goodwill. The miniature wicker-style rocking chair in the conservatory? Etsy. The greenhouse? Well, I bought the tiny glass building on Amazon, but I made the furniture and accessories to go inside the greenhouse. The little green-painted house in the center? I made that out of polymer clay. The Airstream trailer? Goodwill, and it was once a birdhouse. The stone cave house? Goodwill, and it was made for an aquarium. The great thing is that you can do this too, and have a fairy garden that doesn’t look like anyone else’s.

I’m going to do some posts that talk about the various ways I put this together. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the pictures. And if you are in the Seattle area, I teach a workshop on creating your own unique fairy garden. You can find out more and sign up at Verlocal.

See the next post in this series here!