Wild about Fairy Gardens: A Miniature Zoo

When planning this year’s crop of outdoor fairy garden themes, I knew I really wanted to make my biggest garden a zoo. Inspiration came from my trip to the Indianapolis Zoo in March for their new spring festival xZOOberance, and from all the buzz surrounding the new sloths exhibit that opened there Memorial Day weekend. I haven’t seen the sloths yet but they are on my summer bucket list. When I saw sloth fairy garden figures online, I knew I just had to create a zoo fairy garden. These adorable animals take leisure to the next level and make for the perfect relaxing fairy garden escape!

I took my cues from past visits to the Indianapolis Zoo when considering what size container and animals to include in my fairy garden. To accommodate an elongated layout, I decided to go with a rectangular plant stand and container that’s almost two feet wide. This long container became really heavy and bowed out in the center once I filled it with soil, making it difficult to move the stand around my deck. I’ll have to keep its limitations in mind when using it in the future.

Another challenge I ran into was populating my zoo with animals that were of a similar scale. While I don’t have to have my fairy garden figures in perfect proportion to one other, I do like to keep the scale fairly consistent within a fairy garden or it drives me crazy. This is hard to do when ordering items online if the dimensions aren’t listed. I ended up with a few tiny animals like a giraffe and zebra that were dwarfed by the other animals, so I decided to make them babies and get bigger animals to be their mothers. Schleich animals turned out to be the perfect solution for some of the adult animals in the zoo. They are of a consistent scale, with sizes specified online. Plus they’re hand-painted with lots of detail, nice quality and durable, with a large selection of different animals available. The turtles in the back left corner are actually an old Christmas ornament from which I removed the screw and hanger to repurpose it. The animals are fun to move around the zoo. I’m constantly rearranging them – or is it just an excuse to play? The orangutan looks cute hanging from both the zoo entrance and chocolate chip ajuga plant!

For accents I used a few rocks, driftwood from the beach, petrified wood, and some bark I found on a neighborhood walk. I added pebbles to make a path down the center and several zoo signs. I glued the little monkey to the Stay on the Path sign that came with a parrot on it. The zoo arch is a really fun accent to tie the whole look together, and I added daisy fencing to either side of it. Look closely and you’ll see there is a fairy in the garden. She’s hugging the trunk of the elephant!

It’s been an extremely rainy month so the little plants in my zoo garden are absolutely thriving and the animals look like they’re living in a rainforest. A few of the plants were brown when I planted them because I bought them several weeks before planting and let them languish in their tiny pots, but now they are lush and green. This is my first time planting polka dot plant (Hypoestes) outside in a fairy garden. I tried growing it indoors once and it didn’t do well. So I was reluctant to try it outside, but it’s taken off and I love the pink and green spotted leaves. The sun really brings out the polka dot pattern. (This plant is supposed to have mostly green leaves if it’s kept in the shade.) Another new plant I chose for my zoo fairy garden is Ming fern. This is my first time buying it, but like the polka dot plant, I will definitely buy another one next season to use in a fairy garden. The Ming fern is the fluffy green plant in the back left corner with soft needle-like foliage. It looks like a fairy-sized shrub or small tree. The other plants I selected for my zoo fairy garden include Scotch moss, Irish moss, oxalis plum, ageratum and chocolate chip ajuga.

I’ve had so much fun with this fairy garden, I’d like to make another zoo fairy garden next year too and switch it up a little. I’m definitely ready for a trip to the zoo now! What is your favorite animal to see there?