Hollyhocks, cause they are easy to grow, reseed themselves easily, and you can make hollyhock dolls from them.
Snapdragons, nothing more enjoyable for a child than making the flowers snap.
Edible plants, some carrots, peas, cherry tomatoes. Easy to grow, and nothing tastes as good as a fresh veggie. Also found my kids ate their veggies when they came from their garden at suppertime.
Daisies, He loves me He loves me not.

Kids need things that are tactile, they love to touchy, feely, so consider plants like above that they can have some fun with, not just watch grow. That love will come later.

Maybe a tea rose or two in pink and white, some mini-veggies, according to my childs garden book fairies like creeping thyme as a resting place during daylight hours. Some other favorites include forget-me-not,ferns,foxglove (you could use somthing similar as this is toxic if eaten) hawthorn, heartsease, hollyhock, lilly of the valley, narcissus, rosemary, and tulips. Maybe add a stone path, out of pebbles, among the plants for the fairies to walk on. Have fun with this one. I might be doing something similar for my children this coming spring depending on how busy the new baby keeps me.
colleen

If you can create a shady area, maybe behind the bench, you can have bleeding hearts.

I know this is a really old thread, so maybe there is not a lot of traffic here. I am making a fairy garden with my four children (ages 10 months-6 years, three boys and a four-year-old girl) and I was inspired by an article in better Homes and Gardens magazine. They had some really great resources and the most incredible stuff was at thefairysgarden.com. My daughter is getting abunch of it for Christmas! Anyone else have any great ideas/resources/photos to share?

Here is a link that might be useful: the fairy's garden

How about Dierama pulcherrimum, comenly called Fairy's fishing Rod or Fairy Wand. It does nead moisture but likes full sun.

Take care, Penny

Have you thought about adding some bulbs to your flower bed? My three year old daughter looked inside every tulip last spring. She was looking for Thumbelina. It was so wonderful to watch her carefully open the petals and peek inside. It made me decide to plant more bulbs this fall. I added lots more tulips and daffodils. I planted the small fragrant daffodils next to their little bench and long stemmed tulips behind it. I planted lots so my daughters could pick some and put them in a vase.

I agree that snapdragons are magical to children. My daughters love to make the flowers "talk". I think that mini roses would also be nice. I purchased some foxglove seeds last year but disgarded them after reading the warning label on the packet. Foxglove is a source of digitalis prescribed by doctors to strengthen the heart and regulate its beat. It is very poisonous!

My children love to pick flowers so I plant cosmos in our garden each year. They have fun panting the seeds and watching them grow. We get so many blooms that my daughter's cannot pick them all. They put them in their hair and tie them into bracelets. The seed from the cosmos is also easy to harvest and the girls help collect it. The cosmos we have are pink, purple and white.

I think forget-me-nots, because they're popular and beautiful and self-sowing, would be an excellent idea. Any variety of thyme would be good, too, especially since they're usually hardy and in ancient lore they're considered a 'fairy plant'. I like lemon balm, too, because the more she touches it the more scent it will give off.
How do you make a hollyhock doll and how do you make snapdragons "talk"? I've never heard of such a thing...

zepherine droughin rose=no thorns, lambs ears for texture, daisies for making wreaths for ones head, pansies and nasturtiums edible flowers, scented leaved herbs ie lemon thyme, mints, and sunflowers are always a must have for any fairy garden

I am planning a fairy garden for my grandchildren. Today on this coldest of winter days, I went to a craft store. There I found miniature fences, a gazeebo, garden cart, and all kinds of fairies, trolls, and gnomes. I felt warm all over watching the staff pull out all of the spring garden stuff. It will give us something to plan during these bleek winter days. The next place I am going to look for accesories is some of those dollar stores. Yipee!

Cupids darts are beautiful and easy to grow.

the ideas here are wonderful...i totally agree with cosmos, so many varieties and the seed are easy to gather (my kids had a blast with the bright lights mix since the seed 'fan out' when it's dry). daisies get a big yes too, shasta's are easy to grow and they'll spread well for her. (another seed collecting bonus too) but i'd get plants from someone instead of planting shasta seed to get her closer to bloom-time. seems i saw something too in the michigan bulb co catalog called 'fairly lilies', pale pink and in the buy one get one section, but i didn't look up your zone.

what about a couple of strawberry plants? i seem to recall my childhood imagination figuring one berry would feed 10 or so little fairies.

love so see pictures of what you guys come up with.

shelly

lambs ears, they are so fuzzy and wonderful.

My daughter's fairy garden (which I posted about here about a year ago) is just amazing and has been the source of endless joys. If anyone wants a photo, click on my page and email me! I wish i knew how to post one.

Here's how to do it

Here is a link that might be useful: Posting Photos

(This is my ten-year old daughter responding.) I love Rosemary, it smells very good. You can go outside and pick it off and use it in food. I also love Peace Roses, they look very nice & would be a nice addition to your garden.

My children and I have had lots of fun making fairy furniture. With some shears and small branches, we use twine to piece together chairs, tables, etc. It's rustic, but beautiful, and we all enjoy them. Since the material is all in the front yard, there's nothing that we can't afford to try. Seats/benches/chairs are more comfy with some moss. When I taught my daughter how to harvest zinnia seeds, she began leaving them on the fairy tables in the eve (for food, she said), along with water and some flower petals.

This seems to be one of those threads that has a life of it's own. My I suggest a "Ballerina" Rose. It is aptly named, pink and covered with small pink blooms. I gave my granddaughter one last year after her first dance recital. We have a fairy garden for her. A quiet spot, some shade, some sun. Lots of furniture her size, and a miniature potting bench grampa built. I also found a string of small battery powered lights which we strung in the trees so at night it's like "fairies" flying about. Unfortunatly we don't have fireflies in Oregon but I do my best.

Herbs, so she can crush the leaves and smell them.

And I know it's heresy, but dandelions with their puffballs if you have a small corner where they can be imprisoned.

Write her name by planting lettuce seeds in a bed.

Daisies for daisy chains, cherry tomatoes for small treats

Any plants that will attract butterflies, and a water dish for the butterflies. Don't forget to give the butterflies a place to light while they drink.

Ray

How about a toad abode? Maybe the faries can ride the toads like horses? Alpine strawberries are small but have a wonderful flavor. Celosia cockscomb are colorful and have a velvety texture.

I think that this thread is wonderfull. I am trying to create a Fairy Garden in the worst place to try and do this, Las Vegas, during the summer we have temps of 115! My 10 year old granddaughter started this, and it is an area that sits in full sun from 11a-3p.
We planted Morning Glory to climb the walls, and Moon Flower(white morning glory) for the arch. One will open in the morning and the other in the evening. SweetPea, miniture roses, Day Lillies for the fairy glen in the corner. Moss rose, Strawflower, Carnation, Snapdragons, Hollyhocks, Asters, Alpine strawberies, Zenias, and a package of wildflower mix.
Because of financial constraints, populating the garden has been the most exciting part.
We began with three Fairy pic's, I discovered an unpainted Gnome, carrying a pick-ax, so using bark from a palm tree, twigs from a pine tree and spanish moss, I fashioned what looks like an entrance to a tunnel, made a wheelborrow out of bakeable clay, painted it and put some pieces of 'Fools Gold" in it and positioned the Gnome and borrow near it.
A clear glass christmas ornament became a gazing ball in the glen. Buttons in the shape of ladybugs, were glued to flower pot saucers. Driftwood pieces from the retired fish tank litter the glen, one was used to hold mushroom birds, that sat over a found bird's nest with painted wooden eggs.
I made clay Mushrooms and frogs.
This week I will be using 14x14 flore tile to make wall plaques with "Fairy" poems, there is one written in gold paint in the corner above the glan that says,
"If your eyes are quick, and the light is just right, you can see Fairies dance with delight"
I am having more fun with this than she is, each day as she comes home from school, she checks the garden to see what is new.

You mean the fairies aren't real? :-) I *swear* that my friend and I *saw* them over the fence in the neighbor's yard. We called it "fairyland" and I guess the bugs flying around looked like fairies to us. The backyard was a fantastical place with a pond and a rock wall and lots of moss and aquatic plants and a bird bath. I loved to just look over the fence! The mosquito eaters I think were the "fairies" :-) We'd sit inder the "peperipo" tree (don't know what the heck they are named really, that's just what Mimi said it was called and it stuck...but they are those trees with the oval, purple fruits with the poisonous pits and the strange tasting fruit that almost tasted poisonous, it'd make your mouth a little numb or something...we'd eat the fruit but no the pits...that and the sourgrass and all the fruit trees in the yard and the blackberries...So I guess I want to say to make sure you have healthy edibles in your fairy garden, maybe some mint! :-))

minibot (who only wishes she had kids to share this stuff with!)

what a wonderful treat to read this thread. i was wondering something, though. i thought the fairy gardens were supposed to be tiny. what if you made a tee-tiny garden with moss and baby's breath and teeny mushrooms and elfin thyme. you could make little trees out of twigs. you could even put in a little pond...just sort of brainstorming here. this might be more of an indoor fairy garden.

I just came across this thread and thought I would share what I have been doing this summer.
I planted a new garden under an old maple tree. I then decided to make a "fairy garden" in there. I started with a "fairy door" stuck to the bottom of the tree and a "fairy window" to the left of the door. I then added a unique birdhouse that I found online which is kind of Swiss Chalet looking. I put that to the left of the tree for a "fairy house".
Then I made a "river" of sorts using aquarium gravel rocks. I made a small bridge out of sticks from the yard and put it across the "river".
I found some little fairy statues at the Dollar store and put them in amongst the "fairy garden". (I told my four year old that when we are not out there the fairy statues come alive and play in the garden, but the minute they hear someone coming they become statues again). Now every morning she will ask me if the fairies came alive the night before. We are having alot of fun with this. It is so cool to see her eyes light up when I tell her that they must have been playing out there because some of the flowers were disturbed during the night.
I am having so much fun with this. I am glad I did it.
I would like to post some pics, but I have yet to get some good ones of this garden.(my digital camera bites...LOL)
Anyway, have fun with it. Kids grow up too fast and you both will remember this for many years to come.
Lucia

i would like to interview any of the people who have posted on this thread for an article i'm writing for the Orlando (FL) Sentinel newspaper on fairy gardens. the article will appear on the front page of the garden section in late September. i'd love to include comments from some of the people who have posted here about their experiences creating fairy gardens and sharing them with their children and grandchildren. because my deadline is looming, the best way to reach me would be by phone - 352-429-2425. calling in the evening would be good. i'm a freelance writer and work from my home.

What a beautiful idea! I will have to do a lil research and surprise my daughter with this. We have grown veddies a bulbs in the past but this is so different. I also love the idea of making furniture out the yard something I might be able to talk my 11yr son with. If any one has any other ideas please share!!!!

This is my third attempt to post this message. As a new user, I seem to be having trouble, so please forgive me if something along this line has already appeared. I am writing a novel in which a grown woman reminisces about the fairy garden she and her mother planted when she was little. I've received wonderful inspirations from this thread. I would also like to use the poem the grandmother in Las Vegas mentioned: "If your eyes are quick, and the light is just right, you can see Fairies dance with delight." Is that poem original to her, or is it a quote? Can anybody tell me?

Here is another link for faery gardens I found. Since this thread has almost died, thought I would resurrect it once again...

Here is a link that might be useful: Mulberry Creek's faery gardens...

Reviving the thread some more...

I'm making a fairy garden for my girls too. Its going to be in a clearing in the middle of an orchard (many many apple trees!!!). The plan is kidney shaped, and about 10-12 feet long (4-5 feet wide) with a small hill at its center. At one end will be a wishing well with irises in it. The other end will be a small round flat area covered in moss - like a "meeting space" for the tiny people.

These are the other plants I'm planning to have....
Columbine
Freesias
Violets
Lily of the Valley
Blue Bells
Irish moss or Sweet Woodruff
Wild Strawberries
Rosemary - pruned to resemble a bonsai tree
I'm tring to find a way to add minature roses, but they might have to go into the window boxes of the girls playhouse thats nearby...

We're working on finding small birdhouses that can be modified to look like fairy houses (glue on a "door" to hide the bird hole) scattered among the garden, and a doll house sized park bench to place under the rosemary "tree" for the top of the hill.

After much "research" online and in books the girls and I found that the general standards for a magical fairy garden should have the following items...

Water for fairy drinking (preferably moving, like a stream or small pond)
Flat rocks for "sunning" themselves...
Fragrant herbs and flowers (anything preferred by butterflies or hummingbirds will work)
Fairy "Food" - wild strawberries, heather, any small berries...
Apple trees (for some reason this came up a lot in the research, sacred tree to fairies??)

Hope this helped anyone thinking of making one too...

I learned this poem almost 50 years ago, in grade school. I am going to make a plaque of the first line, for the Fairy Garden my husband and I are making for our first grandchild Emma Inez. We are so excited . This forum has given my many ideas thank you.

Fairies

THERE are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
It's not so very, very far away;
You pass the gardner's shed and you just keep straight ahead --
I do so hope they've really come to stay.
There's a little wood, with moss in it and beetles,
And a little stream that quietly runs through;
You wouldn't think they'd dare to come merrymaking there--
Well, they do.

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
They often have a dance on summer nights;
The butterflies and bees make a lovely little breeze,
And the rabbits stand about and hold the lights.
Did you know that they could sit upon the moonbeams
And pick a little star to make a fan,
And dance away up there in the middle of the air?
Well, they can.

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
You cannot think how beautiful they are;
They all stand up and sing when the Fairy Queen and King
Come gently floating down upon their car.
The King is very proud and very handsome;
The Queen--now you can quess who that could be
(She's a little girl all day, but at night she steals away)?
Well -- it's Me!

Rose Fyleman

Is it okay if a 35 year old has her own fairy garden? I have boys who are more interested in pulverizing the dog with my shovels and rakes than growing flowers. The few fairy statues I do have already have nicks in them from my 3 year old's baseball bat.
I saw this awesome fairy table and chair set on HGTV. The show is called "That's Clever". If you want to see how they were made the episode number is 161.
This woman made the table and chairs look like toadstools. I've always thought that if I had a little girl I would try to make the same set.
I would also look at creating a butterfly garden out of Butterfly bush, Echinacea, Black-Eyed Susans, etc. If I can't have fairies I will go for the next best thing, LOTS of butterflies!
In my garden I have two fairy statues. They are both replicas of Mary Cecile Barker's fairy drawings. To me, she is the only one who knew how to draw fairies. I have one peeking through my clematis vine and another by the Cecile Brunner. When I get my pond installed, I'm going to find another to keep the water lilies company. You can find her garden statues just by doing a web search.
Other suggestions for flowers are Shasta daisies (any variety), salvias, geraniums, sedums, chives, balloon flower (platycodon), clematis, roses, lavender, spiraea and lots of spring flowering bulbs.

Good luck! Hopefully your daughter will love it half has much as you will!!

H

My daughter has her fairy garden-it's actually called "Fairy Village", complete with a mayor, an adobe hut she built out of clay, birthday parties, etc. It is partly shaded and absolutely beautiful. She had regular annual begonias and petunias come back this year after the mild winter. Her garden has:
Lamb's ear
Dicentra- white & regular bleeding heart
Lungwort
Hosta-golden tiara and francee
Pansies,
petunia
Mums
Lilies
Crocus
Lily of the valley
Stargazer foamflower
Heuchera
Morning glories

We tried bergenia and columbines last year, but they didn't come back. We also have enjoyed making stepping stones together for the garden-a fun project, and painting old furniture for the garden. Don't forget pinwheels, spinners, chimes, etc. She loves to spend time in her garden, and I love it also.

after reading this- I need to either build myself a fairy garden or hurry up an have a baby girl!

I love this ..

Love these ideas! I can't wait to do this with my kids!

(I would just like to point out that the original poster's girl's may have outgrown the garden by now!)

Having said that, I recommend miniature roses and rain lillies (because they're magic, the way they appear and disappear!)

And, for the fairy gardeners who are old enough to be out after dark, glow in the dark pebbles. I found mine at hearthsong.com (they also have clear fairies with lights in them and various other little things.)

mine - or should I say my daughters - Ah! who am I kidding! It may be enjoyable to the girls and any little kids who stop by sit and stare for HOURS, but essentially it was my idea, I designed the whole thing, and have been the driving force behind having it at all... And I continue to think up and create new things for it...

Anyway - mine has ended up being placed under a 2 year old corkscrew willow tree instead - It's closer to the house and is much much bigger than originally anticipated. For now the sweet woodruff and wild strawberries are filling out the area around the base of the willow, there's a violet and elfin thyme covered hill with a small lake at the bottom of it and a small gravel path leading to the top (a gazebo and miniture roses pruned to look like climbing roses are being added to the top of the hill later this fall) and a flattened out hollow covered in irish moss for a "meeting place." I have variegated forms of thyme and melissa lavender as shrubs around the edge of the garden and a few branches from my over zealous pink and white weigela hangs over the "hollow". The fairy garden is actually an extension of my butterfly garden, just slightly shaded (and will be deeply shaded when the willow fills out over the next couple of years) I just added some rembrandt tulips I hope will give a nice dramatic splash of color next spring before the freesias, columbine, violets and roses bloom. (and after years of plain colored tulips I can tell the girls that the fairies painted these ones!!!)

I will post pics as soon as I can but right now I'm being selfish - want to keep it to myself till I feel it has some semblance of being ready for public viewing... :) Also waiting for the plants to fill out and really look like it does in my head (did that make sense or did I just seem nutty???)

As well as the gazebo I'm working on 4 houses to put nestled in the sweet woodruff and a "bait shop" for beside the lake and looking for some small stumps or seats to put around the thyme hollow, maybe even a little swing for the fairy babes? Next year I'm hoping the willow will be big enough to dangle twinkling lights in and lots of birdhouses of course... Soon as I figure out where to put it I'm adding some white heliotrope that I grew from cuttings and have slightly too much of. Now I'm just hoping that the wild strawberries calm down cause they are going bananas and I fear they will choke out the rest of my plants...

I'm 30 years old, mother of 4, a criminal psychologist in training and I am no afraid to admit that I love my garden. I am envisioning a few years from now laying in soft green grass in the shade of my contorted willow tree staring into the little village and seeing if I can see the sparkling glint of gossamer wings, or hearing the giggling of fairy children in the rustling leaves of the willow tree.....

I know this is an old thread, but there are some of us in the Cottage Garden forum that are trying to find more ideas for fairy gardens.

There are so many wonderful ideas here, for anyone wanting to create a special place for children to enjoy the garden. I hope there are more great ideas out there and anyone who wants to jump in and contribute...it would be greatly appreciated!

Does anyone have any pictures of their gardens they'd like to share? I'd love to get some ideas for my nieces' garden. Thank you!