Red White and Bloom

Summer is in full swing, so over the next several weeks I’ll be sharing this year’s crop of outdoor fairy gardens I planted. Each year I like to mix up my fairy gardens.  Some of them are similar to gardens from past years; I use figures I already have and arrange them a little differently, then add a few new accents.  I also like to make at least one or two brand new themed gardens.   It’s always fun to come up with something new to enjoy so I don’t get bored having the same gardens each year.  This year I had an idea to make a patriotic fairy garden to celebrate all the American summer holidays: Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day and Labor Day.  I planted and decorated my little garden the day before Memorial Day – just in time!

I chose fairy garden plants with blue and white flowers to go with the patriotic theme.  I couldn’t find any small red flowers to plant in my fairy garden, so I chose a red container to plant it in, which gives it a really nice pop of color.

The flowers in this fairy garden I’m most excited about were two I’d never seen before: Blue Angel Dwarf Alkanet and Miniature Mat Daisy.  I always like to try new plants to see if I can discover new favorites.  The miniature mat daisy looks, like the name suggests, like a field of daisies growing from a low dense groundcover of rounded green leaves.  The blue angel dwarf alkanet makes a cute blue-blossomed fairy garden “tree” due to its vertical growth pattern.

I also planted Riviera Marine Blue Lobelia, a small uniquely shaped deep blue flower and spring bloomer, and Cloud Nine Blue Ageratum, which has fuzzy flower clusters.

I planted Dwarf Baby’s Tears in the back of the garden, to serve as a nice low filler behind the fence.  It is supposed to sprout tiny dainty white flowers in May and June, but I’ve never successfully gotten it to bloom in my containers.

Before I planted the flowers, I placed the accents around the container to get an idea of the layout I wanted to use and where to leave gaps for the decorations.

Last year I bought the sitting fairy who is holding a little fairy of her own, and I definitely wanted to use her in this garden since she’s predominantly red, white and blue.  I was really excited when I spotted at a local nursery her matching friend riding a red bike with a white dog wearing little blue hair bows in the bike basket.  I think these fairies are just so cute!  I had the white fence in my fairy garden stash of supplies, and placed it near the back of the garden, trimming it to fit the diameter of the container.  Then I tied the flag bunting around the little posts.  The flag and bunting are on loan from my mom.  I ordered most of the other decorations from My Fairy Gardens like the blue grill, red wagon with picnic baskets, and patriotic pinwheels.  I placed the taller items like the flag and pennants towards the back of my fairy garden.  The flag crate was empty for a while until I located the perfect miniature fillers at Michael’s: a basket of berries and small Coke bottles.  The fairies are now ready for their summer backyard cookout parties!

I placed this garden on my covered front porch to protect the fabric flag and bunting from the rain, and also because it’s a shadier spot than my deck.  (My garden includes the shade loving miniature mat daisy and baby’s tears.)  The flower pot’s color turned out to be a perfect match to my red door.  This little fairy garden makes me smile every time I go in and out the door.