Fairy gardens are versatile and simple enough to be made for both outdoor and indoor spaces. They can be compact and creative ways to add a personal touch to any room or yard. However, if you’re going to make a fairy garden with real plantlife, it’s important to choose plants that will thrive in the chosen environment. You also want to choose plants that will serve a specific aesthetic purpose such as mimicking bushes or trees.
Here is a guide to some of the best plant choices for your indoor and outdoor fairy gardens.
Bedding
Moss is not the only way to make the base of your fairy garden lush and green. There are several low-growing plants that stay small and can also look like miniature versions of larger plants.
For indoor fairy gardens, baby’s tears are an excellent choice. You might see them frequently as bedding plants in outdoor gardens, but they can live happily indoors because of their preference for low light. They have tiny, densely arranged leaves which make them appear fluffy and dense.
For outdoor fairy gardens, try miniature daisies. As the name suggests, the blooms on this plant are extremely small, making them perfect for miniature garden scenes. This plant creates a dense layer of foliage and stays low to the “ground” which will help keep the focus on other features while still creating a sense of lushness.
Tiny Trees
Plants that look like miniature trees are a popular choice among fairy garden enthusiasts. You can trim some plants in a certain way to get the perfect shape while others look like trees without modification.
Members of the cypress family serve as excellent trees for an indoor and outdoor fairy garden. Both the false cypress and Ellwood’s blue cypress are ideal for indoors, while the dwarf cypress is a better choice for outside. Other excellent options for the indoor garden include the parlor palm and the English boxwood. The boxwoods have a bushy appearance and may need some trimming in order to get the perfect tree look.
Small evergreens make great trees for an outdoor garden and will look good all year. Try a miniature juniper, dwarf Mugo pine or Japanese holly. Japanese holly is like boxwood in that it will naturally grow into a rounded shape, so to make it look more like a tree, prune the lower branches to expose the trunk of the plant.
Theme-Specific Plants
Whether something is best suited for indoor or outdoor gardens is the most important factor in choosing plants for your fairy garden, but you still have plenty of room to be creative. If you’re going for a specific theme for your garden, there are plenty of options not included in the above suggestions. For example, succulents like aloe and miniature cacti are perfect for a desert theme. If you want to make a fairy garden for your kitchen, you can plant miniature strawberries, baby carrots and fresh herbs like rosemary and mint. Primrose, cyclamen and miniature African violets are hardy and colorful choices for a flowering garden. Plant varieties with similar needs in environmental factors like humidity and sunlight to make sure your garden is healthy and magical all year long.
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