How to Create a Fairy Garden in a Container

Create a magical miniature container garden that will enthrall your kids. In this make-believe landscape, a pint-sized bush is a large tree, twigs and leaves turn into furniture, and tiny woodland sprites are as close as your imagination. Arranging plants just-so can create the effect of a little forest, a mossy lawn and other scaled-down echoes of Mother Nature's grander schemes. Then start imagining the fairies that visit late at night when the world is asleep.

Materials Needed:

• container with drainage hole
• high-quality potting soil
• plants (used here: boxwood, lithodora, Irish moss, living-rock plants)
• "furniture" (fairies generally prefer natural materials, including bark, twigs and leaves)

• pebbles
• decor and fairy figurines
• water

Create the Garden Bed

Fill the container or planter with potting soil.

Plan the Design

Using a stick, "sketch" out the design in the potting soil. Decide where the tree will go and the best places for the other plants, the bench and any other decorative items.

Enlarge Photo+Shrink Photo-

Install the Plants

Remove enough potting soil from the container (Image 1) to accommodate the boxwood (or other "tree") so that, when planted, the top of the root ball is about an inch from the top of the pot. Gently tease the roots apart (Image 2), and plant and firm the soil around the roots (Image 3). Plant the moss (Image 4) and other plants (Image 5).