Valentine’s Day Sweet Shop Fairy Garden

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you’re staying warm and cozy if you’re experiencing bitter cold winter weather where you live too! Welcome to my first outdoor fairy garden for Valentine’s Day. Our mild December was perfect for enjoying a Christmas fairy garden outside, so I decided to create a Valentine’s Day fairy garden in late January. But as soon as I started planning and working on my Valentine’s Day theme, temperatures plummeted to way below freezing and stayed there for weeks! What timing! I made sure to take photos soon after I finished the garden, before all the plants died and the figures were frozen into place!

The idea for this fairy garden came from my Witch’s Brew Coffeehouse & Tea fairy garden I made for Halloween. I thought it would be a cute idea to carry the theme over into Valentine’s Day and make a little sweet shop. The planters I used for my two-level sweet shop are shown below. I added the mini cypress tree from my Christmas gnome porch arrangement to the gold pot in mid-January while the temperatures were still mild and the soil soft; the rest were planted last spring, summer and fall. I wanted to cover the gold pot because the color was too harsh and not what I had in mind for a pink and white themed Valentine’s sweet shop! I wasn’t sure the best way to do this, so I decided to try a 10” stretchable Pot Sox fabric cover in a burlap pattern. The flower pot is at least 12 inches in diameter, but the stretchy cover did just barely fit the flower pot after a lot of tugging and coaxing.

I found a little house with pink trim I thought would work well for a sweet shop. I love how it has four tiny window boxes. I added flocked miniature pink border plants used to landscape dollhouses and railroad scenes to the boxes. They are the perfect size for pink flower accents. I set the white fences with pink roses from Flurry’s Garden on either side of the sweet shop. Behind the fences I added two tall blooming heart picks and a pink birdhouse previously used in Flurry’s fairy garden. To give the winter landscape a little more color, I tucked a trio of small roses from a floral pick behind one side of the fence, and another trio in front of the other side of the fence. Little pink pointy mushrooms complete the landscaping.

The little metal bistro tables and chairs are similar to those used in my Halloween coffeehouse fairy garden, but in a nice bright pink color. And of course the fairy is dressed in pink and white to match. I noticed when I purchased her that her name was Mara. I decided her middle name is Lee, in honor of my mom Marilee who is the best baker and cook and could open her own sweet shop with all the delicious treats she spoils her family and friends with!

My favorite feature of the fairy garden is the vintage white wicker metal dessert cart with a removable tray that sits on top of the cart. I love how dainty and perfect it is! I filled it with lots of deliciously adorable tiny treats: a lovely plate of heart shaped donuts, a sweet little strawberry cupcake, a strawberry ice cream sundae, and miniature heart shaped Linzer cookies. Fairies love Valentine’s sweets!

I placed a heart shaped cake on one of the bistro tables in the sweet shop, and a fancy Valentines cappuccino and plate of assorted gourmet Valentines chocolates on the other table that is in the second flower pot. A cute cherub holding a heart shaped rose wreath and wearing a sparkly halo made of tiny roses adorns the sweet shop, along with a teapot and teacup for added decoration. An I ♥ You rock ties together the two levels of the themed fairy garden.

All of the picks and figures with stakes were really difficult to stick in the frozen soil. The ground was like rock! I ended up sitting the fairy garden in the garage overnight to thaw the soil enough to get the picks in.

The first time it snowed after I finished the garden, it looked really cute with a dusting of “white frosting” but then icicles dripped onto it from my roof and refroze as temperatures took an even more extreme nosedive. What a frozen mess! Let’s see if I attempt this again next year, or stick to summer and fall fairy gardening! The year-round challenge is kind of fun and I’m hoping for a mild spring to work on my next design!

My cat Ellery and I are wishing you a sweet Valentine’s Day! She wanted to share photos of her own cat-sized Valentine’s Day sweet shop!