Annie's Fairy Garden

Back at Christmas my sister-in-law made the girls a really cute play fairy garden, complete with flower fairy dolls. Think of it as a fairy-themed dollhouse. The girls played with it for months until the imitation moss was getting all over the room, so finally I had to take it apart and save the components for re-assembly later.

For Annie's birthday, Collin and I pulled out some of those accessories and planted a live fairy garden in an old enamelware bowl. We spent an evening date re-potting succulents at the university greenhouse, and brought a few divisions home as well as several new succulents from Walmart. Incidentally, Walmart has a really good selection of succulents these days, most for around $3. It's as good or better than many selections we've seen at plant nurseries. Thanks for making them trendy, Pinterest!

The miniature bridge, fairy light, glass river stones, and little toadstools all came from the first play fairy garden. The larger mushroom table is actually a champagne cork that I painted a while ago just for fun when I noticed its natural mushroom shape.

Several pieces from Annie's informal rock collection (doesn't every kid come home from walks with their pockets full of rocks?) made their way into the landscape, including this little stump that I think is a deer antler segment.

The blue glass marbles cascade as water down a creek bed banked by some of the larger landscaoe rocks, while pea gravel rounds out the look.

I fixed up an old $2 vanity chair from a thrift store for the plant stand. When I bought it I'd been thinking of reupholstering it, but I never found the right room for it, so when I needed a stool for the fairy garden it was the perfect solution. A few coats of paint on the seat, and it was a whole new chair. 

We set it up behind Annie's bed in the bow window of the girls' room, which is the sunniest spot in the house. Now we'll have to see if it can withstand three curious girls! I hope it can, because I need a good spot to over-winter some of my potted plants, and eventually I'd love to set up a plant-covered window seat in this space. An reading nook surrounded by plants sounds just about perfect.

A few of the extra succulent clippings went into this small fruit bowl for my kitchen windowsill, so I'll also have some green to enjoy all winter. Even when the view from that window is entirely white and brown, there will still be some living plants inside to help hold me over until spring planting season. It'll be fun to see which plants have outgrown their space by then, and which do well in the group planting.