One of the best ways to build a strong and healthy relationship with your kids is by engaging in fun activities with them, especially when these activities would also engage the creativity of your kids.
One of such activities is building a fairy garden. You could decide to build one for them, employ someone to do it for you, or ask them to do it themselves (which you might later regret when you are cleaning up their mess). Or you and your kids could build it and strengthen your relationship. Don’t forget that you would be having fun too.
So, how do you build a fairy garden? This article teaches you how to build a fairy garden in 7 simple steps. But first, here are the key materials you would need in your magical fairy garden.
Materials
You aren’t going to make your fairy garden out of nothing. It would be nice if you could, wouldn’t it? You just cast some magical fairy spell and poof, a garden appears.
But since we can’t do that, let’s make do with these regular materials to create magic:
- Pots: They could be garden pots or just big containers that are wide enough to contain the fairy garden. If you only have one to spare, it’s okay. But if you have more than one to spare (and maybe break on purpose), that’s just way better.
- Soil: You would need lots of it. Depending on how deep your pot is, you would need the soil to almost fill up the pot. If you don’t care so much about maintaining the garden for so long, you may use any type of soil. But if you want your kids to keep and maintain the project (and teach them responsibility, maybe), you may use planting soil. This way, they can grow the plants in their fairy garden by themselves.
- Plants: You need miniature plants of different shapes to make up the fairy garden. In your plant collection, there should be those that have many tiny leaves, so they can pass for the bushes in the fairy garden. Include plants that can also pass for trees in the little fairy world you are creating. You could even use twigs to give your garden a nice natural variety.
- Pebbles, shells, moss, and anything to make the garden look natural.
7 Steps To Build A Fairy Garden
Let’s get to the fun part.
1. Plan the Content of the Garden
Before you and your kids go ahead, it is best to make plans of what they want their fairy garden to look like. Let them come up with ideas of what they would want in their fairy gardens and how they would make those things. For instance, if they think their fairies would feel a little safer in a fenced garden, let them come up with ways to make the fence.
Be careful to not make it another school work for them. Many kids don’t like schoolwork. Try to make it as fun as possible. By the way, you can use toothpicks or many tiny twigs to make the fence.
Also, decide on the plants that are going to make it into your fairy garden. Don’t just pick plants because they look colorful and bright. Pick plants that make your fairy garden look more natural. For instance, use a mix of plants that can pass for bushes and trees.
You can also ask your kids to draw out a layout of their fairy garden on paper. While this serves as a blueprint for the fairy garden project, it would also help them learn to make plans and stick to plans in other things they do.
2. Prepare Materials
After you have laid out your plan with your kids, the next thing to do is to gather the materials you would need. You can build yourself an amazing fairy garden with those materials above, but you may decide to make your kids think outside the box and improvise on their own.
Don’t forget that this is as much a fun project as it is an avenue to improve their creativity.
Gathering the materials you need would save you and your kids the stress of having to pause in the middle of the project when you don’t have the materials you need to build a particular aspect.
Essential materials could include pesticides. It is also essential for you to learn how to get rid of pests that might affect your plants.
3. Preparing the Pots and Soiling Them
The first thing to do is to place gravel underneath the biggest pot which would hold your fairy garden. This is to allow for drainage and prevent your soil from getting soaked and muddy.
You could use one pot for your fairy garden and it would still look nice. Only that it might lack the natural uneven landscaping of nature. But to achieve this, you break smaller pots into pieces so you can arrange them irregularly in the biggest container to give an uneven look.
If you don’t have extra pots to break, don’t worry. You and your kids can come up with other objects to do this with.
After you have designed how you would want your landscape to be with your pot(s), pour soil into the biggest pot till it’s nearly filled up.
4. Execute Your Garden Plan
Remember the blueprint your kids drew, now is the time to execute what’s on it. You guys are now builders, constructing their fairy tale world. Get creative. Have them place the fairy home someplace on the ground that is very convenient unless they want their fairies to live on trees.
You could create a pond and surround it with pebbles. If you are feeling very creative, you can add a toy bridge and line some pebbles underneath it to give it a feel of a river flowing under the bridge.
Don’t forget the plants too. Fairies need a place to hide when they are playing hide-and-seek with one another. They also need shade to protect them from the sun.
If the fairies would need to access places on raised platforms but are too lazy to use their wings, why don’t you build them a ladder from twigs?
It’s your project, guys! Get creative!!!
5. Add Pebbles, Moss, Shells, To Make It Look More Natural
You may use bigger pebbles to serve as rocks. Let the shells beautify the garden with their colors. Just add anything that makes the garden look more like anything you would find in a magical fairy garden.
6. Water the Plants
All your kids need to do now is to water the plants. This is where responsibility starts. You could even show them how much you trust them by growing some kitchen veggies in their fairy garden and making them take care of them.
This way, they are also helping out in the kitchen while having fun. Just make sure the veggies are easy to grow.
7. Clean up
I’m guessing you must have made a mess out of everywhere. Fairies are not dirty creatures. They love clean environments. So, try to get the kids to clean up whatever mess they must have done on the floor and everywhere else.
The Bottom Line
In these 7 simple steps, you and your kids can build yourselves a magical fairy world which your kids would be proud of for a long time.
Provided you take good care of the fairy garden, it would continue to thrive and you can have your kids out of your hair doing something constructive.
