Enchanted Autumn: Fairies Flutter in the Fall Garden

Hello fall friends!  I hope that your autumn is off to a great start, full of pumpkin spice and everything nice.  At my house, September means fall makeover time for my fairy gardens.  I’ve enjoyed my summer containers since May, but by now they’re in need of some TLC to tame overgrowth and remove dead plants that didn’t survive our crazy summer weather, which alternated between hot dry spells and heavy rain.   Many of my summer garden figures have faded from the sun or become buried in overgrowth over the past four months.  And this year the soil became compacted in several of my pots so the water didn’t drain well, and several plants died from their roots rotting.  When I look at my photos from last year, I can tell my fairy garden plants fared much better in 2017.  But there is still enough plant growth left in my fairy gardens to work with this year, and the autumn accents can be used to cover up any bare spots.  I did end up transplanting some flowers from one fairy garden to another to fill in a bare spot and add some color.

I created four outdoor fall themed fairy gardens: two farmers markets, a Halloween fairy garden, and the return of my campfire critters. I ended up using almost all of my fall accents from last year and added in a few new decorations too.

Gnomegrown Farmers Market

Whether you’re looking for pumpkins, sunflowers, apples, or fresh veggies at the farmer’s market, these gnomes have it all!  The Gnomegrown Farmers Market is my favorite of my fall themed miniature gardens this year.  I just love the gnomes in it!  I used two of them in my Autumn Gnomes garden last year, and the third one holding the pumpkin went in the Pumpkin Patch miniature garden which was my favorite of my fairy gardens last autumn.  I love having all three gnomes together in one garden this year.  To make this farmers market, I removed all but the large mushroom accent from my summer Gnome Friends garden, and then added a variety of pumpkin, sunflower, vegetable and wood decorative accents that I thought matched well with the size and style of the gnomes.  I just mixed and matched pieces I already had and didn’t have to buy anything new to create this gnome garden.  I trimmed back the chocolate chip ajuga plant in the back left corner a little bit, and pulled out some dead growth from where the sweet alyssum didn’t make it and covered that bare spot with the farm stand in the back right corner.

Fairy & Friends Farmers Market

My second farmers market fairy garden contains a few new figures from a fairy farm collection sold by Pretmanns.  The pumpkin shaped stand of veggies is my favorite piece from this set.  I added several other pieces I already had, purchased from JoAnn’s and Michael’s in previous years.  I’ve used the fairy sitting on the pumpkin several years now in my fall farmers market fairy gardens.  You can check out my past farmers market gardens with her here.  This year several friends join my fairy, including a hardworking gnome, fall woodland friends like the squirrel, owl and crow, and a rooster, hen and chickens.  A few days after I set up this garden, I was putting away my fairy garden figures and realized I had a spare scarecrow, so I added it to the front of the garden since a lot of the figures are towards the back.  This garden had been my Unicorn Dreams fairy garden during the summer.  When I transformed it for fall, I pulled out the Lewisia and another plant that died in late summer.  Luckily the blue star creeper is very hardy and took over a lot of the bare spots.  I love its tiny blue flowers.

Clairvoyant Claire’s Halloween Garden

This year I really wanted to make an outdoor Halloween fairy garden to go along with my indoor Halloween scene.  But that meant I needed a second Halloween fairy!  I hadn’t seen any cute Halloween fairies in stores this year (and I don’t like the scary ones!) so I ended up ordering a witch fairy online that I thought was super cute. Her name on the website was Claire which didn’t sound terribly witchy, so I decided she must be named for her clairvoyant abilities. I love her little orange butterfly wings!  I wasn’t sure where to set her, so I kept moving her around and decided she looked best in front of the gate.  This is my fourth year using the pumpkin house in a fairy garden.  Last year it was part of my Pumpkin Patch design. If you look closely, you’ll notice the table and chairs have bats and spider webs as part of their design.  I set pumpkins on the chairs and a garden gazing ball on the table like a crystal ball.  The witch’s cauldron sign says “Spellcast Magic This Way” with an arrow.  Follow the spooky stepping stones into Claire’s garden!  I think this design is my second favorite of my fall themed miniature gardens this year.

Campfire Critters

S’mores anyone?  I really enjoyed this set of camping critters my mom gave me last year so I set it out again this year for fall.  I added a raccoon jumping in a pile of leaves that had been in my Fall Merriment garden last year.  The plants in this garden thrived all summer long when it was hot and dry.  I was looking forward to it having a beautiful container to work with for fall!  But then we got a bunch of rain in August and the roots became waterlogged and many of the plants died out at the end of summer.  So I added some small decorative stones to cover some of the bare spots, and also transplanted a small clump of blue ageratum from my summer patriotic fairy garden to fill in the rest and add some color. See how my campfire critters looked last year.

I’d love to hear which fairy garden is your favorite in the comments below!

For more fall and Halloween fairy garden inspiration, check out my other blog posts:

• Festive For Fall: Fairy Garden Seasonal Makeovers
• Falling for Fairy Gardens
• Halloween Magic: A Bewitching Pumpkin Fairy Garden