How to Make Your Own Fairy Gardens

Fairy gardens are so fun and easy to make.  My girls were excited at the idea of creating and designing their own fairy gardens, and this is a fun project that you can be really creative with.

Choose a Pot

You may need to shop around a bit or upcycle something you have.  This can really be whatever you want, from glass containers to terracotta to pans or wooden boxes.  Terracotta pots may be among some of the cheaper containers.  Ours ran between $3.99-$7.99 each (depending on the store), but there were containers in the size range we were looking for that were well over $30.

Gardening centers and online retailers such as IOTAGARDEN are great places to browse and shop for pots and garden supplies.

Fill your container

You can put a shell or other item over the hole in the bottom of the pot to prevent losing dirt through the drainage hole.  (We also bought trays to put under the gardens to protect our tables when the fairy gardens are indoors).  Fill your container with potting soil and begin filling with small plants.  You may have to do some searching for small plants. There are so many options for small plants, from st augustine grass plugs to spikemoss to stonecrop.

Within a few months of planting our fairy garden, we had to move what started as a tiny spider plant to a larger container.

Once you have completed your plantings, add some moss to cover the soil.  You can buy bags of moss at the store, or even look outdoors to find your own.  It will help keep the soil moist, and it also adds to the atmosphere of a fairy garden.

Add accessories

We were lucky enough to be able to find some great fairy garden accessories, including a chair, table, birdhouse, watering can, flower pot, and beehive.

However, you can also make your own accessories, using things like various colors of glass stones (which you can even find at the dollar store), paintable figures (like mushrooms and fairies), fairy dolls, tiny terracotta pots, small tiles, stones, pebbles, shells, and more.  You may want to gather some natural materials like bark and small sticks to construct things out of.

Your fairy garden can be an ongoing project.  What we like is that our gardens are always evolving.  Sometimes plants outgrow the containers, or the girls find something new to put in their gardens.  This can also make a nice opportunity for gift-giving, as children can slowly collect items to add to their gardens as they find them or receive gifts.

We have made other theme gardens as well – see my Beach Fairy Garden post!

Happy gardening!