​My Mini Fairy Gardens.

My Mini Fairy Gardens

At Fairytale Gardens we truly have the most beautiful people that send us photos of their fairy gardens that we just adore! Every now and then we get sent something from a fairy gardener that's really special, who has amazing passion and love for fairy gardens.

We want to share with you Sophie and her daughter’s amazing gardens, their love, passion and knowledge really shines within their work. Please take the time to read Sophie’s story on how these gardens began and view their wonderful work.

Also visit her Instragram page, mini_fairygardens (see links below)..

A bit about me, Sophie.

I lived in Somerset, UK for most of my life surrounded by beautiful English cottage gardens. When I arrived in Australia a few years ago I was full of ideas but found it hard to grow even the same plants here, but to my delight I found that I could make miniature gardens in pots with plants and they survived!

The first garden (which was going to be the ONLY one so we wanted it to be a big one) was with my daughter as a fun project. She designed it on paper, she envisioned a fairy house, archway, a cute little veggie patch, a pond for the ducks, a path to lead the way and some trees at the back to create a magical feel.

It was so exciting when I found Fairytale Gardens, they had everything we needed and more! We pored over a few of Aileen’s blogs and one we really enjoyed was about choosing suitable plants and trees for a miniature/fairy garden, (- see fairytalegardens website under Fairy Gardens - Plants To Use). This really helped us as we have tried asking advice from many garden centres but didn’t have a lot of luck with suggestions for miniature fairy garden plants - so many plants we tried overwhelmed the pots in a matter of weeks - there was a lot of trial and error involved in what works and what doesn’t in a fairy garden! We really find that following miniature garden enthusiasts like Fairytale Gardens and miniature garden centres like Miniature Garden are so much more knowledgeable on which slow growing and miniature trees and plants best to use.

After reading the Blog on great plants for miniature gardens, (See Fairytale Gardens website under Fairy Gardens - Plants To Use) we ended up using a lot of the miniature Steppables range mentioned from our local Bunnings which are truly wonderful to use. Also luckily for us we have a wonderful conifer nursery close by so we bought a few dwarf slow growing conifers (some of them only grow 1cm a year so perfect for miniature gardens and look like real big trees). We have also tried some bonsais but the pots need to be planted IN the main pot - and repotted, roots trimmed etc every few years so are more time consuming and need more maintenance than the conifers.

So with an amazing earthenware Atlantic pot that we found on special at Bunnings in hand with our plants we headed home to ponder on Fairytale Gardens website and wow, just so many options! We bought a cute little house and lots of wonderful accessories (I really like the rustic arbour and walls for the veggie garden from Fairytale Gardens). Then we added some outside fairy lights (with a solar panel) for the house & our garden was complete. Now all we have to do is wait for the fairies to come (with a note left in the house to welcome them of course!)

I use the term fairy rather than just miniature gardening as I’m not perfect with scale (another great blog to see is Fairytale Gardens post on miniature garden sizing) as I love all the fairy accessories which often doesn’t have a set scale. Most of my houses are small so I try to keep the scale roughly 1:24 with accessories (I think most miniature garden accessory sizing are a little bigger than mine like doll house sizes at 1:12) so everything doesn’t look too out of proportion.

After that first garden we were hooked and still had so many more ideas - we just HAD to do JUST one more garden!

I love that it’s something I can do with my daughter and the joy we both get from seeing our gardens develop and grow. Every season the gardens, trees and plants change and we notice something new almost every day. It encourages her to be outside and the magical thought of the fairies coming to visit our gardens is enchanting to children (and big kids alike!)

Sophie @mini_fairygardens

Thank you Sophie

To view in larger pictures please visit... 

Sophie’s Instagram page - https://www.instagram.com/mini_fairygardens/

Other Links

FTG Blog - Plants To Use

FTG Blog - Miniature Garden Sizing

FTG Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/fairytalegardens/

Thank you

Fairytale Gardens