DIY Fairy Garden & Dragon Lair

As I hope you read in my last post, I’m about to become a Girl Mom again! I’m so excited about Firefly joining our family, whether it’s for a short time or forever!

She’s coming for a weekend “respite” visit tomorrow before she moves in and even though there’s plenty to play with at our house, I wanted to make something for her that would combine her love of playing outside, her great imagination, and her need to play alone at times. I had seen these on Pinterest and decided to try my hand at making our very own fairy garden!

Fairy Gardens are just miniature play settings that can be in a garden planter, a backyard, or really any setting. You can use “found items” to furnish the garden or there are tons of miniatures available, some specifically for fairy gardens, at craft stores.

I decided to make ours in elevated pots because we have dogs 🙂 They like to pee on everything! I started with one in a medium sized plastic planter and set it on a metal plant stand on the back porch. However once I started putting it together, I realized it wouldn’t be big enough and bought two more plastic pans. When the boys saw what I was making, S insisted that he needed one too – not a fairy garden, but a dragon garden. We call it a Dragon Lair.

Here’s what I used to make our Fairy Garden and Dragon Lair:

1 medium sized plastic planter – $5 (Family Dollar)
2 short plastic pans (I think they’re for catching motor oil) – $1 each (Dollar Tree)
Potting soil – $3 for a large bag (Family Dollar)
Small terra cotta pot – $2.00 (Jo-Ann’s Fabric & Craft store)
1 sitting fairy – $8 (Jo-Ann’s)
1 fairy on a swing – $9 (Jo-Ann’s – both of these fairy items were 30% off)
1 bag of dark rocks – $1 (Dollar Tree)
1 bag of small multicolored rocks – $1 (Dollar Tree)
A few ceramic stars from a paving stone project when M was a baby – $0 (Found around the house)
Green mosaic pieces from the same paving stone project – $0 (Found)
1 marble hotglued to a golf tee to make a gazing ball – $0 (Found)
Tiny dog toy/statue – $0 (Found)
1 “pond” made from a painted salsa lid filled with blue glitter glue – $1 (Found)
Various artificial flowers and succulents – $1 each (Dollar Tree)
Plastic butterflies on stakes – $1 for two (Dollar Tree)
Small string of colorful flower lights, battery operated – $1 (Dollar Tree)
Plastic dragons – $0 (Found)

About $33 to make three little gardens but you could do it for less if you have these items around your house!

Putting them together is pretty easy and you have to remember that if kids are playing with it you’ll be constantly fixing it back up. For the planter, I started by putting some rocks (roughly fist-sized) in the bottom of the planter so I would be using less potting soil and make it heavier/less likely to topple over. Then I added the soil and placed the items. Same for the others, just minus the rocks on the bottom.

Here’s our setup all put together on a little table on the back porch.