Are your little ones fairy fanatics? After reading fairy stories such as Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty, lots of children start to wonder about fairies. Are they real? Are they watching us? Then there’s the Tooth Fairy who magically appears while they sleep at night and leaves money for baby teeth that have fallen out.
Imaginations usually run wild when we’re young and it’s good to encourage this creativity and imaginative play to develop problem-solving skills. As Vince Gowman @VinceGowman said: ‘Supporting children to play requires us to remember what life is all about. It’s not about getting from A-Z, but rather dreaming beyond both.’
If you’d like to develop your fairy-loving child’s imagination, why not create a fairy garden for them to play in? Here’s how to do it…
First of All, What Is a Fairy Garden?
A fairy garden is a whimsical way to dress up your garden space. You can plant some shrubs, add some fairy figurines, miniature fairy houses and fairy lights to create an outdoor scene for fairies to come and enjoy.
Upcycle Cardboard to Create a Fairy House
Turn leftover cardboard boxes into miniature fairy houses. Add some rocks or pebbles inside the house to weigh it down and protect it from the wind. Cut out windows and doors, and then glue some moss around the outside. You can keep a cardboard lid handy to stop any rain from getting in and try to place the house in a sheltered area of the garden. You could also place toy furniture inside from a doll’s house so the fairies have somewhere to sit.
Get Planting
You can place your fairy house inside a planter and surround it with shrubs. Plants that resemble mini trees are a nice idea – lookout for these seeds at your local garden centre:
- Elwood’s Pillar
- Jean’s Dilly Dwarf Spruce
- Prune Bush Thyme
- Miniature Curry Plant
- Miniature Juniper
- Dwarf Mugo Pine
- Sky Pencil Japanese Holly
- Weeping Fig
Alternatively, you can plant some herbs that you’ll use in the kitchen, such as basil, mint, rosemary and thyme. That’ll make the fairy garden both pretty and sustainable.
Decorate the Soil
Encourage your little ones to collect trinkets and treasures to place in the soil. They could even jazz them up with some glitter glue, seashells, conkers, mini figurines and pebbles which are all suitable. Allow them to get creative and choose what they think is best.
Hang Some Fairy Lights
Hanging some fairy lights around your fairy garden will keep the area well lit so the fairies will know where to go. It will also look magical and pretty once the sun sets each evening.
We hope your little ones enjoy creating their fairy garden with you. It’s a truly magical activity and one that keeps on giving as it requires maintenance and upkeep. Try to keep their imaginations alive by commenting that you’ve seen the fairies at night-time, or perhaps move things around slightly to make it look like the fairies have visited.