Last year I bought a little fairy garden kit for Violet. It was cute, but the seeds it came with led to some grassy type of sprouts that died pretty quickly leaving only a shallow pan of dirt and some fairy decor that wasn’t a lot of fun. I think Lily ended up eating some of that dirt.
Anyway, I wanted to do the garden idea with both girls this year, but decided to DIY it. My thinking was why pay $12 for something easy and enjoyable when I can spend even more time and money on basically the same thing by doing it myself?
I at least hoped the plants would offer more longevity to the project.
I found a bag of mini-garden bits on Amazon and picked up some large and small planters at Walmart. There is a plant/pet supply store a few blocks away and I had both girls choose the flowers for their gardens.
Violet went with some cascading pink petunia, while Lily went with a sturdier looking reddish begonias with thick, folded leaves. I added some purpley -green type of Alternanthera because I like that color combination and the name sounds like a Harry Potter spell for sending normal people into an alternative lifestyle.
After they played in the dirt for a good while, we sprinkled the seeds (A fairy garden blend) on top of it and added the decorations- we probably should have switched the order of the last two steps.
I photo documented the progress below.
Day 1: It looks promising. We had a lot of fun putting them together and I warned them that seeds, like people, can sometimes be duds. We can just get more seeds. It’s nothing to get upset about. Secretly I’m dreading the idea that only one of their gardens will grow because that would mean the seeds sown on this day were really those of bitter, bitter jealousy.
Day 4: The sprouts started on just the second day! Even though Violet’s was notably sparser, both were just delighted to see the first shoots appear almost overnight. I told them that they grew so quickly because fairies might have been dancing there. Now that we’ve invited them in it’s important to keep fairies happy, as they can turn quite nasty if offended. This was a good opportunity teach them the difference between the Seelie and Unseelie courts and other valuable life lessons.
Day 8: Sprouting along nicely now. No flowers yet, but some of the plants seem to be wearing little dark purple hats that I assume will open into something. Mark did not like that I told the children that fairies help gardens grow because that’s not very Science, but he didn’t want to completely undermine this idea and rip the magic of this experience away from them, so instead he explained that what really helps plants go is manure. He then explained what manure was and now the girls think that the fairies are just pooping all over the gardens at night.
Day 10: Well, nothing is flowering, everything is just getting taller. I moved some of the little decorations around as needed because they seemed to be impeding the growth, but otherwise it looks lovely. The girl’s flowers and my leaves are thriving too. I bring in the containers at night because there are a concerning amount of finger sized slugs out there and the weather has gotten HOT – I don’t know how much longer I can bring them outside during the day either, so these are soon going to be completely indoor plants. They’ll probably be fine.
Day 30: The fairy dancing is done. Who knows what tragedy befell the gardens. Maybe being indoors was too stifling, or the constant attacks from the kitten were too much of a threat. Maybe one of the fairy scheiße parties of Mark’s imagination went catastrophically awry. We’ll never know, but fortunately I’m never short on tragic accessories and was able to create this Memorial Fairy Garden that we can keep around all year.
