The Accessories We Added to Our Fairy Garden This Year
Earlier this season, I wowed the boys by putting together a dinosaur miniature container garden, which Sawyer promptly claimed as his own outdoor dollhouse with dirt. Every time he’s outside, he rearranges the accessories and makes “RAWR!!!” noises with the tiny plastic dinos.
In short, I quickly realized that garden was 100% the boys’ — hands off, Mom, take your OCD vision somewhere else.
Like to my own magical fairy garden bowl, perhaps?
Well, maybe. (I do still have kids after all.)
Last year, the boys and I created out first magical fairy garden with whimsical accessories that included a stone bridge, a gazing ball, a lantern, and a cute little dragon. (Find the details here!)
I’ve been obsessed with all the cute garden miniatures since then and have a vision of creating a whole sprawling garden bed fairyland someday. (Uh, like if #DoneWithFun Daddy moves out … because he has non-negotiably squashed that idea so far.)
The marriage-saving compromise we’ve reached is incorporating one or two new accessories each season, to keep my vision within a budget and somewhat under control.
Here’s how our magical fairy garden came together this year:
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Build Your Own Easy-Care Magical Fairy Garden Bowl
What We Did Differently This Year
Planted fewer plants and gave them more room to grow.
Last year’s garden, once it took off, quickly grew into a jungle instead of a fairyland — the plants were so lush and out-of-control that you couldn’t even see the fairy accessories by the end of summer. This year, I selected only three plants instead of four or five, leaving ample space for them to take root and flourish around our accessories.
Expanded to a larger bowl.
Along the same lines, we planted our dinosaur garden in last year’s container and upgraded to a deeper bowl with a slightly larger diameter. The 18 inches of the new bowl allows extra space for a few more fun accessories.
Added a fairy outhouse, tiny toadstool houses, and a glass mushroom.
You can tell I’m 100% a boy mom because I allowed Sawyer to pick a fairy outhouse as our newest addition. (Cue the face-palm.) He didn’t have to hard-sell me too much on it because the cottage style matches our bridge and the doorway has a cute moon cutout detail.
In the Target dollar spot, I found a two-pack of the tiny toadstool houses as a new pop of color because you should never pass up accessories that cost 50 cents each.
If there are already gone from your Target Dollar Spot, here are a couple of similar options on Amazon. The big kit is a steal for all those accessories (100 of them!!) for only $12.50! I wonder if #DoneWithFun Daddy would get behind my fairy landvision if it cost under $20…
A purple glass mushroom added an element of height to the garden and I just love the color. This one is breakable (unlike most of the other accessories, which are resin and fairly kid-indestructible), so I got to place this one and the boys know it’s hands-off, even when they’re rearranging every other element.
I bought my single mushroom at a local garden shop (The Growing Place in Naperville and Aurora has the best selection of fairy accessories!) A similar set is available on Amazon, and then you’ll have extra to embellish the rest of your garden with. These are the cutest!
Refocused Sawyer’s love of watering to prevent fairy garden drowning.
Fairy gardens easily get waterlogged because of the small container size. Overwatering leads to discolored or dying plants. Combine Sawyer’s watering can obsession with the amount of rains in Chicago recently, and our fairy garden bowls were looking more like swamps than gardens. Now Sawyer helps us water “the big garden” instead of “the baby garden” and I mist the garden bowls myself to keep them moist but not drowning.
We are eagerly looking forward to our plants beginning to sprout and flower so that the fairy bowls look a little more magical. Check in on my Instagram Stories for pictures of the progress all summer long, and follow on Pinterest for more creative ideas like this one.
Now the question is: What do we add to the fairy garden bowls NEXT? Share your best ideas in the comments below or on social media with @neverdonewithfun. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.
Happy planting!
If you’re looking for a specific accessory you see in my pictures that isn’t linked in this post, all the accessories are linked here.
