Report From An Opinionated Gardener – July 16
We’re having a Fairy Garden Festival at the garden center, and are calling for entries into a Fairy House contest. (Prizes are $25. gift certificates!) There will also be several fairy houses hidden around the garden center, and children of all ages will be able to pick up a sheet of clues at the front registers and then look for the hidden houses.
So my mission this weekend is to create a couple of fairy houses to contribute to the hunt. Since my yard is littered with pinecones, I decided to make one house be a Pine Fairy’s dwelling. My idea was to wire the cones together so that the house can stay out in the weather without falling apart.
That technique worked pretty well and after the main structure was wired and fairly sturdy I stuffed the spaces with sheet moss. This not only filled the many gaps but also served to hide most of the wires.
The Pine Fairy’s House took about two hours to make and I had a great time doing it. Here is the appeal of fairy gardens for adults: they allow you to be creative and play…to imagine a project, figure out how to create it, and put it together just for fun.
I can hardly wait to do a different one tomorrow.
I held the cones together by wrapping a strand of wire around each, moving from one to another, first making the bottom layer, then adding on top of that etc.
