Fairy Garden

From the age of just a few weeks old our grand daughter Little Miss has spent many many hours at Nan and Pop's house. We baby sit on a regular basis and Friday night is sleep over at Nana's house, and has been since miss was about six months old. We enjoy our one on one time together, miss loves her bubble baths, but most of all when it is time for bed she loves her bed time story's. The imagination of a child is a wonderful thing and stories of angles and elves, pixies and fairies spark that imagination. Of fairies living in Nan's garden and coming out at night to play.

So from a little girls imagination and the love I have for her, came the idea of a fairy garden for little miss. I had an area in mind at the side of the house, we had already made over the garden see earlier post. I wanted to have a small water feature and lights at night (solar) My son made me a bamboo kakei water spout and found a solar pump from China that would pump the water the meter in height that was needed.

I did manage to find a die cast fairy window and door set the are made to be put on the trunk of a tree. I had an old piece of river red gum tree root which looked perfect once the windows and door had been added. I was beginning to think that the fairy garden may just come together and look OK when finished.

I found a dish big enough to hold about 15 liters of water, so set about putting the water feature together, dish, grill rocks, kakei and then some ferns to add some greenery. Now for a test run of the water feature to check everything was working.

With a bench seat place close to the fairy garden we would both be able to sit and enjoy it together. I sat and listened to the sound of the running water and the sound was not quite right. It sounds more like I've left a tap turn on than the gentle sound of water babbling down and onto the rocks below. So I tried placing some old shade cloth under the rocks to try and soften the sound of the falling water, still not the sound I'm after. Back to the drawing board, I decided to try another style of water feature using a glazed ceramic pot that was tapered at the bottom. It looked good and sounded perfect, a much softer sound more like a babbling brook. So peaceful to sit out in the garden and just enjoy, the fresh air the sound of the water.

When it was finely finished and little miss can around for a visit, I took out to see her fairy garden. The look on her face was priceless, she said to me Nan where did you learn to make such a beautiful fairy garden. Later that night when it was dark and the lights came on, out we went again the look on her face this time was even better. All the work and effort was worth it just to see her face.



The last photo here was taken at night to show the effect with the solar lights on. The light are connected to a dusk to dawn light sensor switch that can be set to stay on 4, 6, 8, 12 hours depending how long you want them to stay on. I set the switch most of the year to 4 hours, when we are on daylight savings time I set them at 6 hours.