My son Evan has just turned 4 and he’s currently off nursery and isolating at home due to one of his class-mates testing positive for the coronavirus. So, we decided to make the most of this impromptu time together and create a some fairy gardens just for him to give him the full Small World experience!
Can fairy gardens be for boys?
Boys will love playing with fairy gardens as much as girls. Fairy gardens give boys the opportunity to be creative outdoors and enjoy designing, planting and playing in a miniature garden. Adding extras such as safari animals, cars, dinosaurs, trains or Lego, will enable boys to get more involved in imaginative play. Using water, sand, soil, small bits of wood and pebbles will give them the chance to experiment with different textures and use them to create bridges, dens or anything else they can think of!
I have a boy and a girl and have never been the type of parent to say ‘boys must do this, girls must do that’, but I’ve found that my kids gravitate naturally towards what would be traditionally considered ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ toys. Evan loves cars, dinosaurs and diggers, but he also loves playing Barbies, Sylvanians and dollhouses with his sister, Joni. There’s no rules in our house when it comes to play, but Evan seemed keen to put his own twist on his fairy gardens, so I let him take the lead!
How do you make a fairy garden for boys?
Fairy garden base for kids
All fairy gardens start with a base, such as a large plant pot, or a small patch of garden that you don’t mind your kids playing in. Fairy garden bases can be made of anything and I’ve written at length about choosing a base in the post What Base To Use For A Fairy Garden: Advice, ideas & pictures.
When making a fairy garden specifically for kids to play in, choose a base made of a safe and sturdy material – now’s not the time to have a mini glass greenhouse, dainty teacup or rustic (rusty!) wheelbarrow for a base.
To keep things safe, choose a sturdy, chip-free terracotta plant pot or a plastic plant pot. Other options include an old sand pit, an old water play table, washing up bowel or cement mixing tray. As long as it’s strong, it’ll be safe should they get carried away and start leaning on it. You won’t need to worry about adding drainage holes unless you plant real plants in it.
If you’re happy to sacrifice part of your garden, you could create a fairy garden in a flower bed, a tree stump or small patch of grass.
Fairy garden landscaping materials for kids
If your base is deep then it’s a good idea to fill the bottom with some large stones so it doesn’t tip over and so you don’t have to use loads of soil to fill the container. You could add a layer of sand to the top, or just keep it as soil.
It doesn’t matter if you’re making a fairy garden for boys or girls, the main thing to avoid is filling it with anything sharp. Don’t use sea glass, fire glass (or any type of glass!), crystals or sharp shells in your fairy garden.
Smooth pebbles, beads, buttons or natural elements such as twigs, leaves, and fir cones all make excellent landscaping options for a kids’ fairy garden and are safe materials for kids to collect and use. If your child is under three (or prone to putting things in their mouth!) avoid the pebbles, beads and other potential choking hazards and opt for sand, soil and larger stones instead.
Adding water to a fairy garden
Water provides a great opportunity for STEM education, which stand for science, technology, engineers and maths. Try these fun games as a way to kick-start STEM activities in your fairy garden:
- Can your child create a bridge across the water?
- Can they find a way to stop the water draining away?
- Can they make a dam?
- Can they predict and test what objects will float or sink in the water?
- Can they create a boat out of recycled rubbish or natural objects and get it to float?
You can add water in a small dish or bowl, either on the surface or dug into the ground in the fairy garden, to stop it draining away or being soaked up by the sand or soil.
If you’re worried about the mess of using real water, then I’ve written a blog post about what you can use instead – 10 Easy DIY Fairy Garden Ponds, Streams And Rivers To Try Yourself. Bear in mind that not all of the options in the post are suitable for children to use.
Boy-themed fairy garden ideas
The below fairy garden themes should keep boys (and girls!) entertained for hours.
Car themed fairy garden
Evan loves cars, they are by far his favourite toy, so we made this car track theme fairy garden in the lid of an old plastic container. We made the track out of a black piece of card, which Evan drew white lines on with chalk. We then built the surroundings up with sand, soil and plant clippings from the garden.
If you wanted a more permanent track, you could use long pieces of painted wood as a track and position it in a large container or directly into your garden. You could even use some old plastic car track if you have it, Evan has nearly grown out of his Vtech Toot Toot Drivers track and I intend to make a permanent fairy garden out of this when he no longer plays with it inside.
Train themed fairy garden
We have a tonne of train track, so we took some outside and created a train track around part of our garden. This required much weeding first, but once I’d got rid of the weeds and levelled the surface a bit with some stones, it was a great place for Evan to use his imagination and create a countryside train track.
Although this is more ‘playing trains in the garden’ rather than making a fairy garden, this could be a permanent fixture in the garden if you treated some pieces of track with wood protection and laid it in a sheltered spot.
Safari themed fairy garden
We used a large plastic container as the base for our safari-themed fairy garden, and filled this with soil and sand. I added a little tub of water as a watering hole and Evan loved this, he gave his animals a drink in it, drove cars into it and made a mini muddy puddle in it! In the picture below, Andy from ‘Andy’s Safari adventure’ on CBeebies has taken a nose dive into the watering hole!
If you don’t have a suitable container, then this one is perfect for sandpits, just add some natural objects including large stones for landscaping and twigs for trees and you’ll have an instant savanna worthy of The Lion King.
Dinosaur themed fairy garden
Our kids are loving the Camp Cretaceous show on Netflix at the moment, so a dinosaur-themed mini garden would be an obvious choice. We used the same set-up as the safari fairy garden to create a mini Jurassic world.
Below an ankylosaurus is dipping its tail in the tiny watering hole (alongside a zebra, of course).
Farm themed fairy garden
One of Evan’s favourite books is a lift the flap book about life on a farm. We used this book as reference to create our miniature farm, including a paddock for horses, a pig sty and pen, a field of crops and a path for farm vehicles.
We made the little fences out of lollypop sticks to contain the animals and ‘planted’ sprigs of heather for the crops. For the hedges I used reindeer moss and the grass is made from railway modelling flock. You could use moss for grass or pieces of turf, or even sow some cress seeds if your child can wait that long for some ground coverage!
Another idea is to use dried beans or rice as grain or for paths. I had some gravel left of from a previous fairy garden project, so we used this as a path for the farm vehicles to drive on.
I also had a tiny stream I’d made on a previous project which we added to this one, along with a bridge made out of a lolly stick. You can find out how to make fake water for your fairy garden project with my blog post 10 Easy DIY Fairy Garden Ponds, Streams And Rivers To Try Yourself.
If you’re a stickler for scale when making miniatures then please skip ahead and don’t look at these pictures!
Building site themed fairy garden
This is a classic Small World theme which works just as well as a fairy garden. Set up the miniature building site using gravel, pebbles, soil and sand in designated areas. If you wanted to add some greenery, you could plant sprigs from fir trees as mini trees or some moss at the excavation site.
We didn’t try this one today but it’s definitely one we’ll do next time!
What are the benefits of a boy themed fairy garden?
If your son prefers more traditional ‘boy’ toys then they may not have shown much interest in fairy gardens as a lot of the accessories and tutorials tend to have a more typically ‘feminine’ theme. (I’m using inverted commas here as I personally don’t think gender should come into how children play!). So having a fairy garden that incorporates toys your son already plays with should encourage them to get more involved in this fun outdoors activity.
The benefits of making a miniature garden are huge:
- Smell, taste, touch – mini gardens can be a full-on sensory experience, especially if you plant herbs or beautifully smelling flowers in your garden. Children can touch the soil, sand and accessories and experience the different sensations these create. If you’re making a large fairy garden, you could even let your child go barefoot so they can feel the cool soil under their feet.
- STEM – as mentioned above science, technology, engineering and maths come into so many elements of fairy garden play. Discovering how plants grow, lifecycles of the animals in the garden, discovering the properties of different materials, building fences, buildings and bridges and counting all feature in fairy gardens.
- Story telling – Evan had great fun talking through what was happening in his miniature gardens, including rearranging the design of the gardens as his stories changed.
Fairy kits and accessories for boys
You don’t need a lot of things to make a themed fairy garden, a base, a few character toys and some bits from your garden or local park should be enough to get started. But fairy garden kits can make building a fairy garden easier, especially if your child is impatient and wants to avoid the foraging stage!
Below are some kits and accessories that will make your fairy garden a fabulous place for fairies to hang out:
- Koltose by Mash Fairy Garden Kit – this colourful kit has everything you need to get started making a fairy garden, including a base and seeds!
- Hemousy fairy garden kit – this lovely little kit has three areas for planting and is available in pink or blue.
- Friendly fairy miniatures – these super cute fairies are ideal if you want to make a more traditional fairy garden.
- RMS Jack’s Grow and Paint Your Own Farmer’s Garden – this kit has will give your kids hours of fun, kids can decorate the plant pot and plant vegetables and watch them grow, and even eat the end result!
Whatever fairy garden theme you decide to do, your kids will enjoy getting involved and creating their own imaginary miniature world.