Recently my daughter and I have been completely taken by the Fairy Garden craze.  A couple of weeks ago we finally built our very first Fairy Garden.  It came out amazingly well and I found that I was totally addicted to making these small little garden havens that are the perfect size for pixies! The one problem with it was that it was quite expensive – all of those teeny tiny accessories and miniature plants really did a number on my wallet.  One small potted garden alone cost around $150 from start to finish.  Ouch!  (Here’s what our first Fairy Garden looked like, if you’re curious.)

I was super excited after making it and I was all MAKE ALL THE GARDENS FAIRY GARDENS! My husband reined me in a bit, and gently reminded me that 1) they were expensive and 2) that would make me into a crazy fairy garden lady, which by and large is not vastly different than a crazy cat lady.

But, still, I wanted more! So I started brainstorming about how to make a great fairy garden, but on a budget.  I spent a few hours in Walmart walking around their garden section and craft section, and am pleased to say that I came up with a great solution – an adorable Fairy Garden for under $30 made with things that I found at Walmart!

Here’s my list of supplies:

3 terra cotta pots in different sizes – two larger and one really small one
An evergreen plant from the garden section (chosen to give the garden height)
Some ground cover plants for filler
Popsicle sticks in 2 sizes – short and long
Brightly colored material scraps from the craft department
Floral Wire
Blue and white paint
Aquarium rocks

I knew that I wanted to make a dual-level garden like some of the ones that I had seen made from broken pots.  I first asked the folks at Walmart if they had any broken pots that I could buy, but they did not, so I settled to buy two pots and break one of them myself to get the look I was going for.

I was not super strategic in the breaking of the pot.  I just knew I wanted the smaller one inside of the bigger one, so I just kind of hammered and crossed my fingers.  The nice thing about fairy gardens is that it is not supposed to look perfect – it is supposed to look a bit imperfect so the pot not fitting perfectly was ok with me.

Here’s what I came up with once they were fitted together.  Again, it’s not perfect but you really don’t need it to be.  Some of the soil will come out with you fill the pot but once the plants are in and everything is packed down, it will all stay put, I promise.

So you can see that I filled the pots with soil to cover the lip of the smaller pot.  I wanted this to look like two pots that were sort of fused together.  You can see the dirt spilling out of the side, but like I said it won’t continue to spill out once it is all planted and ready to go.  The first plant I put in is the one that gives the garden some height – and I always place it at the back so that it doesn’t block the others.

Next I made the little fairy swing using some of the smaller popsicle sticks and some twine that I found in my garage.  I simply knotted two ends of the twine and glued them between to of the sticks side-by-side.  Then I painted the wood white.

After that I wound 4 pieces of floral wire together to make the base for the swing.  I simply bent it at the top to make it lean out and work as a functional swing.  Then I tied the twine together at the top and stuck the bottom down into the base of of the evergreen plant so that it would blend in.

After that I made a strategic plan in my mind about where I wanted everything to go.  I knew that I wanted to make some steps using pieces of the broken pot, I knew that I wanted to paint the smallest pot blue and use it as a “pond” and I knew that I wanted the pond to be surrounded by rocks.  With those things in mind, I decided to plant the rest of the ground cover.

I did a test run adding the pieces of the pot as stairs and submerging the blue pot to see how much room was left, and if I could plant anything else.

Then I took the pot back out and started working on the stone border.  I had already painted the pot earlier so that it would have time to dry — first with the light blue paint and then at the bottom with a glitter based paint so that when you looked into the pond it would shimmer a bit.

I simply chose my rocks and used a hot glue gun to cover the lip of the pot, so that once it was in place it would look more natural.  Then I placed it back into the hole that I had already dug out with my hand – and it looked like this–

Doesn’t it look great?  I think it really adds to the look of the garden!  (And yes, we filled it with water too, much to the delight of my kids.)

At this point, I suppose I could have called it a day – the garden was looking pretty good, but I still felt it needed a little something.  I decided to make some little flags out of the material that I had purchased.  I folded the material in half and cut small “v” shapes starting at the fold.  Then I glued them along the twine, using my trusty glue gun.  When I was finished with that I suspended the string between two of the larger popsicle sticks, then painted them white.

I thought it made a really nice addition to the garden, and brought a fun pop of color to it as well.  Plus, it looks like the fairies were having a nice summer garden party!

When I got to this point I felt like the garden was almost complete but yet still missing a little something.  Then I decided to make a little sign that said “Fairies Welcome” using two of the smaller popsicle sticks as the sign itself and one larger one as the post.

After that I felt it was done – I was amazed at how cute it was!  While it was definitely more work to make all of my own accessories for the garden (this one took me about 4 times as long to make), I also felt it was worth it – I saved $120 by doing it myself and getting all of the materials at Walmart!

This is such a fun project to do with kids or even by yourself!  My kids love the two new fairy gardens at our house!

So what do you think of my final product? Have you ever made or seen a fairy garden before?