Cooperative Living June 2015 - 26

GARDEN MUSE by Paula Steers Brown, Contributing Columnist
Honey, I Shrunkthe Garden
W
hile listening to
the BBC recently,
I heard the disturbing
news that
fairies were being
evicted from the forest in England. For
some 15 years, children have visited
the woods near the village of
Wayford in Somerset with imaginations
fired for " little folk. " Apparently,
it all started when a crafty visitor fashioned
a tiny door to fit a crevice at
the root of a tree and screwed it into
the wood to the delight of children.
Over the years, however, the number
of fairy doors boomed to 200
and little gifts left near them got out
of control, so officials removed the
doors, amid a flurry of protest. The
Trustees had to endure the sarcastic
headlines: " Quite right, imagination
needs to be STOPPED! "
This incident got me to noticing an
abundance of fairy paraphernalia on
the American gardening scene:
diminutive and dreamy seems to be
all the rage. A quick search of garden
suppliers reveals " fairy doors "
and " elf windows " galore.
With summer vacation kicking off,
it might be a good time to look further
into nurturing kids' imaginations
out in their own backyards and looking
at possibilities for the garden in
miniature.
Natural Building Materials
Walk around the yard and let
children pick out the natural materials
they like. Hand out baskets and see
what they can collect. Sticks, stems,
pine straw, pine cones, fern fronds,
pods, feathers, moss, lichens - all
make wonderful building materials.
Spending countless hours at the baseball
field when I was a little girl, I figured
out all kinds of ways to braid,
weave, and tie stems of weeds into
intricate patterns. They can be used
for rope ladders, railings, arbors, and
swings.
The roots of a big tree offer inviting
crevices. Small purchased or
crafted wooden doors can be made
to fit spaces offering easy access to
fairies, but it is even easier to suggest
an entry by lining the crevices with
natural evergreen or sticks, pine
cones or ferns, and placing small, flat
stones leading up to the door. Elfin
beds can be placed inside, fashioned
from milkweed pods and lined with
downy feathers. Gather peeling bark
from crepe myrtle or river birch and
write messages of welcome on these
natural notes to place at the little
entrances.
Alternative Spaces
If you do not have trees or woodsy
areas to offer, or if you do not want
to attach materials to your trees, you
can make freestanding dwellings out
of sticks, teepee-style, and nestle them
into the hedges or the outer reaches
of the yard. A section of log or a
piece of driftwood turned vertically
and partially dug into the ground can
also make an inviting free-standing
abode. Cap it with half of a large
pine cone to resemble a shingled roof
or give it a shed roof of sturdy magnolia
leaves or flat blades of grass
woven in a basket-weave pattern.
You can purchase thin sheets of
copper at craft stores that can be cut
into shapes for windows, doors and
all types of trim, or simply glue on
pebbles to outline windows. Of
course, Amazon sells fairy figurines
aplenty to populate the settings you
create, but it seems ever-so-much nicer
to let the children (of all ages) imagine
them within.
Holly Geunther photo of miniature garden
(top) is from the Book Anne of Green
Gardens: Miniature Gardening, by Anne
Schellman. For more information, visit
www.anneofgreengardens.storenvy.com.
Imagination
24
Cooperative Living/June 2015
OKSANAMERZLYAKOVA/ISTOCK/THINKSTOCK
http://www.anneofgreengardens.storenvy.com
Cooperative Living June 2015

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