Fairy Gardens R Us

On the weekend, my friend and I went to great class at a nursery, Van Belle's. They offered a course in fairy gardens. I hadn't heard of this new fad until a few months ago when I saw a gorgeous example at a relative's. She had found a lovely container and added a lot of tiny toys with help from her children. What fun. Since then, I've observed these quite often at garden centres.

Anyone can do it. In ye olden days we often turned our terrariums into similar scenes. On this particular Saturday, we were given the following items, along with a $25 gift card to shop for extras as part of the class.  There was a large group of participants...children and adults of all ages.

The instructor gave us a few hints about what fairies like to have as part of their garden....places to hide, glitter to light the path, and so on. The children were particularly enthralled. There were many materials including stones, wood, curly willow branches, moss, crushed brick and sparkly glitter available for our use in order to enhance our gardens.

Being a huge fan of gnomes and not so much of Tinkerbell-like creatures, I decided to create a differnt kind of garden. Similarly, my friend found some hedgehogs and toadstools for hers. Neither of us enjoyed the flower that we were given and sought out a different variety of plant. There were no small grasses so I ended up with a coffee plant. I used my gift card to purchase a house. After all, gnomes need a place to live don't they?

Almost done. The only things missing were the gnomes. As they say in the land of floral arrangements, "group things in odd numbers". I acquired three gnomes and two toadstools and placed them strategically in my garden. The third gnome is out back with the woodpile.

My friend was very creative with her hedgehog garden. I just loved how it looked too.

 We aren't quite ambitious or interested enough to tackle anything massive like the gorgeous fountain fairy garden display at the nursery, but we were proud of our efforts nonetheless.

 Here we are...all done and dehydrated after an hour and a half of creativity inside a greenhouse.

 It's so great to have a friend who is a willing participant in these sorts of adventures. That's truly the best part.