Whimsical Fairy Gardens Inspire Garden Magic

The objective of a fairy garden is to delight people of all ages encouraging them to imagine the existence of fairies. Sized just right for fairies, it is fun to create a garden sanctuary with miniature plants and furnishings in hopes that any fairy who might exist and enters it will stick around – and maybe even take up residence. As a Zen garden inspires tranquility and peace within the mind, a fairy garden inspires the imagination, fun, and belief in the magic of fairies!

The Victorian era may be to blame for the popularity in such beliefs as fairies and wee-sized folk. Painters of the period (late 1800s to early 1900s) depicted garden fairies in captivating works of art causing all kinds of mischief, running circles around their less spritely, human counterparts. The queen of the fairies, adorned in brilliant light, demanded a viewer’s attention no matter her height. These might have been inspired by fairy lore of the Middle Ages where many tales of fairies – typically Irish – were written down as accounts of actual occurrences as if the fairies of Ireland and Wales ran about the hillsides often playing music, and sometimes enticing humans.

The Fairy Ring

The fairy ring, or pixie circle, is the name of a group of toadstools or mushrooms that naturally grow in an oval or an actual circle. A completely natural, although rare, occurrence, fairy lore aficionados know, this fairy ring circle could have once been the site of a fairy ring dance (or at least a good Irish tale about one). Legend has it, if a young child happened upon a fairy ring, he/she could be drawn in to dance, and possibly captured and taken away by the fairies. In Victorian times, young children out after dusk were given a bit of sweet bread which was rolled up in a handkerchief and tucked inside the collar as fairies were said to be easily lured away with sweets.

Later in fairy history, author and artist Mary Cicely Barker created her now famous series The Flower Fairies. She painted and wrote about a whole collection of fairies dressed in the petals of nearly every best-loved cottage garden flower. The latest fairy gardening trend is to provide the fairies with their own miniature garden decorated by benches, trellises, garden tools, spongy beds of moss, and even tiny sized gardening tools or dishes. Gardener’s with twisted imaginations, children, grand-children, and fans of miniatures and fairy lore will enjoy creating a fairy-sized garden, indoors or out.

Create a Successful Fairy Garden:

• Fairy gardens can be created in a container, at the base of a tree, or in a garden bed.
• They can also be created with house plants for an indoor fairy garden. (Watch out, though! Fairy magic could run amok!)
• Use plants with small or miniature blossoms
• Plant traditional heritage or cottage garden plants
• Include a few other-worldly or fantasy looking plants. Plants with stripes, speckles, curly spires, or splashes add interest and increase the illusion of a make-believe world.
• Tiny clay pots make great bird baths or water ponds.
• Search the web for fairy garden furniture and garden accessories, available on eBay, at craft stores, and on websites like The Enchanted Garden.
• Create a fairy garden with a child or observe and instruct while children create their own.
• Create an outdoor fairy garden with fairy lore favorites and cottage garden plants

Include and Plant Two or More of Each Fairy Lore Favorites Starting with Ground Cover

Low-growing ground cover plants provide an open area inviting fairies to linger, and hopefully, be caught glimpse of by gardeners’ children. Attractive and interesting varieties include:

• Clover – any variety is said to attract fairies, but the four leaf clover has a particular magic. If a gardener wears a four leaf clover under his/her hat, or places seven grains of wheat upon a four leaf clover, the gardener will most likely be able to see garden fairies as they come and go.
• Sedum – Stone Crop or Hens and Chicks
• Thyme
• Blue Star Creeper
• Angel’s Tears
• Creeping Phlox – a carpet of vibrant blooms: white, candy-striped, red, lavender blue, or pink
• Moss – soft clumps provide perfect fairy-sized bed. Irish Moss, Scotch Moss, and the particularly spongy Cushion Moss are perfect choices.

Cottage Flowers

• Cat’s ears or Four O’Clocks
• Fairy Lanterns or Fairy Bells
• Morning Glories – guard against unfriendly or hostile fairies, according Fairy Legend
• Violets
• Chinese Lanterns
• Maidenhair Ferns – Fairy Lore states that fairies often come out near ferns
• Ebony Spleetwort
• Shirley Poppies
• Small Tiger Lilies
• Fox Gloves – once called Fairy thimbles and Fairy caps. Planting them in the garden is said to be an invitation for fairies to enter. Don’t plant near the front door of a house, as fairies could mistake this as an invitation to enter the house.
• Lobelia
• Peonies – lovely flowers used by fairies in magic to invoke dreams
• Anenomes
• Coleus – induce a fairy world look due to erratic splashes of almost fluorescent color.

Add Exotic Plant for Visual Whimsy

• Candidissimum is pink and white striped and appears illuminated by fairy light inside
• Sikokianum spirals up from a bed of green leaves in a mass of curling, aubergine spires.
• More fairy world, other-worldly plants are available at Telos Rare Bulbs, online, and Fraser’s Thimblefarms at thimblefarms.com.

Fairy Doors

Hand-crafted fairy doors are a delightful piece of garden art that captivate and charm any visitor cognizant enough to notice them. Often decorated with Celtic knots and symbols, they are carved from wood, or made of resin or metal. At the base of a tree, these doors can be part of a miniature garden, or placed up among lower branches.

Fairy Garden Art

• Solar fairy lights
• Fairy size furnishings and garden accessories
• Fairy lanterns
• An outdoor fairy home – pictured

In summary, creating a successful fairy garden requires a bit of imagination. The end result is a colorful, whimsical garden that gives viewers the suspicion that fairies might really exist; and if they do, they have probably been into this garden. Have fun and enjoy the fairy magic!

Love the enchantment of fairytale magic? Read The Charm of Storybook Housing: Carmel by the Sea’s Storybook Lane also written by this author.