Making a fairy garden doesn’t have to be expensive, in fact, with a bit of creativity, you can make one for as little as £1 (about $2).
The key to making a cheap fairy garden is to use items from nature and those you already have in your home.
I made the two fairy gardens below for less than £1 each. I originally planned to include a bought fairy house in the first garden, which I splashed out £2 on, but my daughter wanted it, so I made my own instead!
The Basics You Need To Make a Cheap Fairy Garden
- Homemade fairy house – use fun items include card, sticks, moss, toilet roll and stones
- Glue – lots and lots of it!
- A container
- Soil, sand, small stones and gravel
- Bark, sticks and twigs
- Moss
- Coconut fibre
- Scenic scatter
- Nail varnish or glue for the water effect
I should include a confession here, I didn’t actually have to buy any of the gravel, coconut fibre or scatter as I already had these. In total, they cost about £14, but if you consider the small amount you’ll need for each project it probably works out about 50-60p per garden.
Below I walk you through step-by-step how I made these cute fairy gardens for a budget price.
The £1 Zen Fairy Garden
This garden features:
- a house made of cardboard and foraged sticks, bark and moss
- a fence made of coconut fibre and cocktail sticks
- paths and ground covering made from gravel
- foraged berries, moss, a walnut shell, sea shells and pine needles for decoration
The main expense for this garden is the bees, I got 30 for £1.50 from The Works and used two in this garden, so at 5p each, these bees bumped the cost of the garden up to about 70p.
You could save even more money by making the bees out of polymer clay if you have it.
Step 1 – the container and filling
I used an empty plastic mushroom tub as the container and filled this with sand from my son’s sandpit.
Most fairy gardens will have a top layer of soil, but as there’s nothing actually growing in this garden, I didn’t bother!
Next I used a lolly stick to smooth out the surface so it was flat.
Step 2 – making the fairy house
I made this mini house in about 10 minutes out of foraged sticks and a cut-up veggie sausage box and topped it off with some bark and moss.
I drew a template for a basic house shape on a cardboard box and cut this out, adding a little door.
I then glued the template together to make a house shape – I forgot to include a flap that I could glue to stick the house together, so this stage would have been much easier if I’d had remembered this!
Once this was dry, I covered the house in glue and then stuck sticks to it. I cut the sticks down to size and if you don’t have any sticks, you could use lolly sticks or even leave the cardboard house as it is.
I added some bark and moss to the roof – mainly to cover up the fact that I couldn’t get the roof to stick properly so there was a big hole in it!
I appreciate the above house is very small and very basic, so if you want something a bit more jaw-dropping, try this DIY tree fairy house made out of cardboard and lolly sticks.
TOP TIP: Your fairy house will be the focal point of your garden, so once you make or buy the one you’re using, it’s a good idea to check that all your other accessories fit the scale of the house. But, as it’s a fairy garden, anything goes!
Step 3 – covering the ground
This is my favourite part. Now, you get to decide what will go where in your fairy garden and can use gravel, foraged items or anything you like to create the fairy garden floor.
I made a path out of small stones and created a reading nook for the fairies which I covered in cream coloured gravel. I added some pink gravel and lots of foraged items to create a woodland corner.
Step 4 – adding cute details
I made a fence for the reading nook out of cocktail sticks and coconut fibre.
Coconut fibre is an awesome material for making miniature foliage and for using in fairy gardens. It’s fibres from the outside of a coconut shell and it can be pulled out in to strands and stuck together with your hands to make vines, hedges, bushes and fences. Mine is from a hanging basket liner I already had, but it would cost about £4 to buy and a little goes a very long way.
I cut the cocktail sticks down to size, put them into the garden ground and then wound the fibres between the sticks.
For other details, I added a lantern I’d made out of buttons – you can read more about making this and other DIY miniature garden accessories in my post 10 Adorable Accessories For Your DIY Miniature Garden.
I also added some bees and shells to make it extra adorable.
Here’s the finished result – super easy, super cheap zen garden for chilled out fairies.
The £1 Story Book Fairy Garden
For the second super cheap fairy garden, I went for a different theme and a different shaped container. This fairy garden is inspired by Rapunzel and Lord of the Rings, so it’s a lot more ‘historical’ in the loosest sense of the word!
Step 1 – the container and filling
Again, I went for an empty mushroom tub but chose a long thin one for this garden. I filled the container with a deep layer of sand and a thin top layer of soil which I mixed in with the sand. I added the soil to this garden, not because anything was going to grow in it, but because I found just using sand is OK, but it doesn’t offer much structure for sticking things in it. Adding a bit of soil gives the surface a little bit more grip.
There aren’t any real plants in this one either, so it didn’t matter that there’s no drainage and only a small amount of soil.
Step 2 – making the fairy house
This Rapunzel inspired tower is made from the classic crafting material – a toilet roll! I cut a window shaped hole out of the loo roll, then glued a piece of cocktail stick under the window for a little window sill.
I then covered the toilet roll in glue and stuck on lots of small, smooth stones. This took about an hour and was quite messy as I used strong quick drying craft glue which went everywhere and stuck to everything!
Once the tower was covered in stones, I cut a circle out of card and cut a line in this to the centre so I could twist it and make a cone shape. I painted it brown as I just used a random piece of card that the ids of drawn on, if you make this yourself, just use a grey or brown piece of card!
Next, I ripped up a cardboard mushroom container (this had a similar texture to an egg box) and stuck this onto the cone roof to make roof tiles. When this was dry, I painted the whole roof grey, it didn’t need to be super neat as this made it more rustic looking.
For the finishing touch to my tower, I took some coconut fibre, twisted it into long strings, sprayed it with adhesive and then dipped it into green scatter to make vines.
Step 3 – covering the ground
I wanted to create a little hill in this fairy garden to make it look more realistic. I used the corner of a cardboard mushroom container to make the shape of the hill and covered this with lots of green flock. I already had this from when I made some miniature trees, it costs a couple of pounds a bag and will last a long, long time in mini modelling.
I put some stones at the bottom to cover the edges of the cardboard. The good thing about scenic flock is that is has an almost fluffy texture and it sticks to itself a bit so you don’t need much at all to cover an area.
I wanted to add a pond to this fairy garden to create a central focal point and to cover some of the ground. This was the first time I’ve attempted a miniature pond. I’d seen a video about using clear nail varnish for fake water and I happened to have some old nail varnish in the cupboard so gave it a go.
I painted a green milk bottle top brown and put some small stones in it to make the pond. I filled it with the nail varnish – this is a very smelly job so I’d recommend having the windows open!
As this was my first pond, I made a rookie mistake. I should have made the pond and let the nail varnish set before putting it into the fairy garden, rather than filling the pond in the garden.
It was really difficult to get the bottle lid flat on the uneven surface, so some of the nail varnish spilled out into the sand and the end result was very uneven.
I added some moss to the pond but the nail varnish quickly destroyed this so it was a bit of a mess. The nail varnish also turned everything in the pond a slight red colour when it set. I’ve no idea why, but it was probably a reaction between the nail varnish and the paint I used to cover the bottle lid.
In the end, the pond looked more like a muddy puddle, but it does add a different texture and an interesting detail to the fairy garden!
To cover the rest of the ground, I used twigs, small stones, gravel, rocks and some moss. I found some yellow flowers on a hedge in the park that I used to break up the green of the moss.
Here’s the final result, this took about one and a half hours to make and cost about 80p!
This particular garden is now home to my daughter’s Polly Pocket!
So there you go, tiny, pretty gardens don’t have to cost much. The best part about making these gardens was thinking of creative ways I could reuse and adapt items I already had.
If you want to make your own super cheap fairy garden, I’ve listed some ideas below to get you started.
The Essentials You Need To Make A Cheap Fairy Garden
The key to a good looking fairy garden is to include materials with lots of different textures and lots of different heights. Below I talk you through the options for finding these materials for free or next to nothing!
Free Fairy Garden Container Ideas
If you’re making an outdoor fairy garden with real plants then this is where is could potentially get more expensive. An outdoor container will need to have proper drainage, be heavy and big enough to not get blown away and be waterproof.
You might have a plant pot you can reuse but there are lots of weird and wonderful ways to repurpose items into fairy garden containers without spending a penny.
You could recycle any of the options below into a beautiful fairy garden container – just make sure you add drainage if you’re using real plants:
- a wheelbarrow
- a tire – from a wheelbarrow, car or anything with a wheel!
- a sink or bath
- a bird bath
- a bucket
- a barrel
- an old pan
Indoor fairy gardens have lots of container options too:
- a fish tank
- a mason jar
- a bowl of any kind
- a juice or milk carton
- a basket
- a lantern
- a teacup
The kids made a fairy garden each out of old oat milk cartons. I just cut the side off, filled the base with sand and soil and let them decorate them how they wanted.
The good thing about using milk or juice cartons for fairy garden bases is that they can be used inside or outside, and – it’s free!
Free Fairy Garden Container Filling And Surface Covering
We usually use sand to fill most of the container and then add a layer of soil on top. We have a sand pit so I just used sand from this. I tried filling the containers with larger stones and gravel, but they were just too heavy and in danger of splitting the container. This is because I used a thin plastic container, if you used a wooden or glass container, you could fill it with heaver materials.
Sand is easy to come by as supermarkets and garden centres sell play sand – or it’s free if you live near the sea! If you really want to cut costs though, you could just fill the container with soil from your garden.
If you’re using a clear container, such as a terrarium, vase or a bowl then you could add some pretty layers of smaller stones, sea glass or shells.
Sea glass is just glass that has been worn into smooth stone-shaped pieces by the sea. All of these are very cheap to buy, or again, free if you live near the sea!
You can easily cover the surface of your fairy garden with foraged items, below is a list of ideas to get you started:
- sticks and twigs
- moss
- bark
- shells
- small stones and pebbles
- evergreen leaves
- glass pebbles (you may already have some of these in your garden that you can repurpose)
Free Fairy Garden Plants, Shrubs And Trees
For the purpose of this article, I’ll just talk about indoor, artificial plants for fairy gardens here.
You can find so many foraged materials to use as fairy garden plants, and you can make your own.
Foraged materials you can use include:
- twigs and sticks – you can find some with lots of mini branches that look just like tiny bare trees
- cut herbs such as rosemary or lavender make cute and sweet smelling trees
- fir cones painted green and/or covered in miniature leaves make great tiny trees, or look good left natural!
- moss, berries and buds
- coconut fibre scrunched up into bush shapes
- if you want to have a go at making your own foliage for your fairy garden, check out my blog post How To Make Miniature Model Bushes, Shrubs And Hedges
Inexpensive items you can buy to decorate your fairy garden include:
- plastic or paper flowers – you can buy craft flowers or cut individual blooms off a plastic bouquet
- paper craft embellishments such as gems, flowers, buttons charms and ribbons can add super cute touches to a fairy garden for a few pence per item. Hobby Craft has a huge selection of versatile items that are worth checking out – you can view them here. I bought the gravel I used in the two fairy gardens above from Hobby Craft, as well as some reindeer moss.
- Fairy houses – you can buy pre-made, undecorated wooden fairy houses from places like The Works. I bought the one below for just £2 and my daughter had a great time decorating it. The button is for scale, but it’s about 12cm tall.
My daughter painted it with acrylic paint and decorated it with stickers. If you want something a little less vibrant, you could use wood stain to colour and treat the wood. This is a must if you plan to put your fairy garden outside.
Whatever you choose to put in your fairy garden, one of the best bits is foraging in your garden or local park for items you can use and then combining these with recycled items form the home and a few specialist bought items. The possibilities really are endless!
