How to Make an Enchanted Garden — Dirty Little Boxes (2024)

Sometimes You Have to Surrender to the Dreaded Sick Day

This has been a long weekend for our family. My husband has been in Paris, (poor baby, I know), so it has been just me and the kids, and, as luck would have it, a nasty little virus decided to join us for the weekend. So, come Monday morning I have two kids with fevers, and I am teetering on the edge, with a temperature of 99.9 degrees.

I Will Rest in My Next Life

What’s a mom to do but to surrender to the circ*mstances and call in sick for the day? But unfortunately, my idea of calling in sick does not mean I actually rest and take care of myself with hot tea and snuggly blankets. I know some of you out there can relate to this. If I do not have something to do, I will make a project for myself. It is literally something I can’t control, despite how often I try to save myself, from myself. And, believe me, I see all your mom self-help ads on Instagram telling me its ok to breathe…to tap into meditation…to take a break…all trying to “save” me. I don’t mean to sound snarky, but I will get to that in my next life.

For now, I have to assume I have one life, and I am not wasting a minute. Especially when I have a whole day with two fiercely independent little boys who are never more loving and attached to me than when they are sick, so I am going to soak this sh*t up.

Rainy (or Sick) Day Activities

Unfortunately, I did have some work I had to get done, so me and my precious little babes spent the morning in a family pile, on the couch, while they watched a movie and I worked on my computer. Around 11 AM, my little five-year-old looks up to me with his sweet blue eyes and his raspy little voice and squeaks, “Mommy, will you play with me?”

Computer closes and I tell him, “Yes, let’s play. What do you want to play?”

He purses his lips, looks up and sideways and says, “I want to play a game, but I want to make the game myself.”

“Well then”, I tell him, “We are going to need to make a game board.”

Creative Improvisation - A Gnome Home!

I grabbed a box from the last time I was at Costco and started to tear it apart to make a cardboard game board, when he looked at the half-disassembled box and said, “That looks like a gnome home!”

Believe me, only the imagination-rich eyes of a five-year-old would have looked at that organic cranberry juice box and seen a gnome home, but I decided to roll with it. I’m a designer and I like to make things, so I just happen to have a bag full of craft supplies, figurines, yarn, and an assortment of wood pieces that I have collected over the past couple of years, so I pulled them all out and made a huge pile on the table. The kids and I started to dig through all the trinkets and materials and slowly some enchanted garden and gnome home ideas began to emerge.

Step 1: Find a Place or Object to Build you Garden in or On

We have used cardboard boxes, broken pots, large flat stones, bricks, and old slabs of wood. We have also just built them outside in a sheltered part of our garden or yard. Literally any surface you have laying around the house or in the yard can be turned into a fairy or gnome home, or an enchanted garden.

If you are not using the ground itself, you can use sticky backed moss sheets or you can glue on fake moss to line the inside or outside of whatever container or surface you are using.

Step 2: Design your Landscape

Is this a forest? Create little trees with twigs and moss, or other small green natural materials. Do the fairies live along a river or by a pond? Use gravel to line the edge of the “water: and fill it in with blue and white glass gemstones. Is this a flower garden? Dollar Tree and craft stores have lots of options for tiny fake flowers for your flower garden.

Step 3: Choose Your Setting

This is where creativity and the mind of a child take over…(and I am not ashamed to admit, my mind had just as much fun today as my kids did.) What is your enchanted or fairy garden setting? Are we in a gnome village with lots of little houses? Or on a fairy playground with a slide and swing set? Or a dragon’s lair and castle? Maybe this is a river adventure or a lakeside fairy campsite? Let your child’s imaginations run wild here.

Step 4: Build Accessories, Props, and add Figurines

Time to pull it all together with little accessories and by building little props. Maybe you need a fairy swing for your playground. You can build it with twigs and twine. Maybe you don’t have any fairy figurines? Build them with old clothes pins, or really any vaguely human shaped object, some glued on leaves for wings, and use a marker to make a face. Or maybe you want little flowers? Nail some carpenter nails into a small sturdy surface and paint the tops like flower petals.

Step 5: Secure Objects with Hot Glue

My kids like to keep some objects mobile so they can change it around and play with the little fairies and gnomes, but they usually like parts of the landscape to be permanent. Lower heat glue guns are the quickest and easiest way to do this. I recommend assisting with, or at least supervising, this step to avoid any burnt fingers.

Step 6: Let your kids work on this for hours.

And, just so you know, this activity will actually keep them entertained for hours!

Helpful Crafting Tools for Creating an Enchanted Garden

There are a couple of helpful tools you might want to have on hand as well. I have a few mini glue guns with mini glue sticks. Make sure they are the kind that use a lower heat than the big ones, so if a kid gets a finger of glue, it might hurt, but its less likely to actually cause a burn.

I also have a small pair of garden shears that I picked up at Dollar Tree. I use them to clip real life tiny plants, wood dowels, thin wire, or to cut other craft supplies.

It’s important to note that the greatest opportunity for creativity with this project is not necessarily in making the gnome home itself, but in innovating all the little elements and details out of found objects. You can build ladders out of dowels, make fairies and cowboys out of clothes pins, boats out of slivers of wood, swings out of twine and twigs, and flowers out of little carpenter nails.

Creative ideas for Enchanted Gardens and Fairy Gardens using found objects from your home and yard.

A Great Kid’s Party Idea

What should you do for your kids next birthday party? Look no further! This enchanted garden or fairy garden project is truly something you can do with the whole family. It engages and enchants boys and girls alike, and the grown-ups love it just as much as the little kids and the big kids. Yes, we are definitely making enchanted gardens for my youngest’s next birthday party.

Afterword…

Somehow, the kids and I managed to make our sick day together the kind of day that I hope will be in my kid’s memories forever. I know I won’t forget it. Daddy arrived home from Paris late tonight and found a huge mess of crafts supplies all over the kitchen and dining room, but he also found two kiddos smiling through their coughs and congestion and a mom who felt like she had made a special day out of a slightly sh*t situation. Everyone went to bed tonight feeling a little bit better, happy that Daddy was home, and ready to get back to school and work tomorrow. Tonight, we will dream of beautiful flying fairies, gnomes in their little homes, and a world full of enchanted gardens and magical creatures.