Fairy/Gnome Garden

Along with all the other great things I can say about my kids (yes I'm partial, its my job) I can also say when they set their minds to something they come though in a big way.  Case in point, my girls wanted to do Fairy Gardens in our 4-H Club.  Now not that I didn't want to do this but first of all we have boys in our club and a "Fairy Garden" didn't seem like loads of fun to a boy.  However when I changed the name to a "Gnome Garden" the Big Guy was on board and I'm sure the rest of the boys will be too.   Now that we had that settled we were left with another dilemma....Cost!!!  With all the cute, tiny, fancy, smanchy items you put into a fairy garden it gets quite pricey and quite fast.  That's not even including the cost of flowers and planters or even containers......Yes we are looking at well over $100.00 for our club of 13members at least....That big money for a small town club to spend on one project so we were up in the air as to whether or not we could do it.......

This is a sample for our 4-H gardens.  This particular one is made using things that are all quite special from the koi pond the Big Guy painted to the fairy houses the girls painted over 5yrs ago.  Even the blue planter used for height is special as it was from the Oldest Daughter when she was an honorary member of a 4-H club at the age of 4yrs.

 .......Time to get our DIY going and see what we could do.  They started gathering and gathering and then we all started working on things.......Small town rural has its advantages too like free river rocks, sticks for anything one could need and even pine cones or acorns....

  

....Having a crafty Mommy (and kids) helps too as we together made a ton of great Fairy/Gnome items.

While the kids worked at gathering items I grabbed some old metal hangers and started making fairly lanterns.  Then realizing the boys wouldn't want "fairy" times in a Gnome garden I used a few small fishing floats and made some Gnome lanterns as well....Love them all!

While I may have made the lanterns above the kids helped with just about every other project.  They helped make houses for our Fairy/Gnome garden by collecting and painting larger rocks from our brook, they also painted tons of smaller rocks.  They painted fairies, gnomes, lady bugs, bumble bees, flowers and even koi ponds.  I helped a bit here and there with the "details" but they did the majority of it all by themselves.

Not everything had to be DIY in our Fairy/Gnome Gardens since we had saved so much in our DIY's we figured expense should be in plants and since we needed greenery/plants we opted to go to our local green house and see if they would be willing to help us out and of course small town living paid off again!  The closest local green house know as the Green Thumb gave us a great deal on plants to use in our gardens so a special Thank You to them for their contribution!

The girls picked out the plants for the gardens.  We have 2 colors of  Coleus and the flowers are what the Youngest Daughter called "puffy fairy skirts".  We also got some Hens and Chicks from the green house as well.

Here are a few more great times the kids and I made to add to the gardens for the 4-H.

The arbor is made with some left over animal fencing and the well is a DIY of rocks and sticks the kids collected and I glued togher.
Not to mention the Bird Bath that we will also be making in 4-H but its from dishes....and so fun
to make but that's another post

Some fencing and bridges made using sticks and colored Popsicle sticks.

Not the best picture but this cute little tire swing is just too cute not to share.   The Big Guy has tons of toys that no longer work and he dug around till he found a monster truck with a broken wheel so we used them for Gnome tire swings...too cute!

The planter and spools are the only expense other then flowers and soil that we made for our gardens.  The spools were a accidental purchase (by me personally) when I was buying spools for our 4-H fishing poles that the Oldest Daughter re-purposed into tables and chair sets for the gardens.....Great up-cycle if you ask me!

The kids sure put a lot of time and work into everything for the gardens and I know all of the members will have a great time making these gardens in 4-H!  I'll be sure to update our 4-H page when we do them :)

*UPDATE*
Check out some of the great items used in the completed gardens Here