Strategies For Apartment Miniature Gardens

As long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with creating unique and beautiful crafts.

As long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with creating unique and beautiful crafts. However, I did not have an opportunity to delve into miniature gardening until I was in my twenties. Having gone to college in downtown Minneapolis, I was constantly surrounded by concrete, metal, and glass. These industrial structures are beautiful in their unique way, but I always remember my roommate, who grew up in the country, trying to find ways to add things that were green and alive to our city home. It was comforting to have these little reminders of where we both grew up. She had the green thumb that I always wanted, a skill she was born with, and I remember being envious because it took years of trial and error for me to understand what would keep a plant alive. The effort that I put into this skill always makes me think of my grandfather who could grow anything in his little plot of land in Superior, Wisconsin.

As I have grown older, I can see the opportunity I had been missing when I was not able to spruce up my apartment with fairy gardens. My home would have been the ideal place to add something decorated, mostly with hardscape and a few colorful miniature plants, miniature accessories, and fairy houses to brighten up an otherwise dim space.

When gardening a small space, I realize that the projects do not have to be large; they could be a container as little as a cup or as large as an eighteen-inch planter depending upon the space that you have in your apartment. If you choose a teacup, you could place glass pebbles in the middle and then build a small, sandy, beach area along the outer edge of the cup. Adding a micro fishing fairy would bring a quaint charm to the design. This miniature accessory would add decoration to a kitchen table, a windowsill, or a mantle.

A fairy garden is small enough to include almost anywhere in your apartment or tiny home if you match up the miniature plants sunlight requirements with the lighting in your space. For example, if you have sunlight streaming through your windows, but the table displaying the fairy garden is not in the sun, then select plants that grow well in a bright, but indirect lighting setting. A reliable miniature plant for these conditions would be a Cupressus macrocarpa, which has a pretty, yellow-green color and it looks like a small topiary.  Consider succulents in fairy gardens where the homeowner does not like to water the miniature plants. Drought tolerant selections are suggested for this gardener's plants choice. You might want to contemplate adding a ‘Zebra Cactus’ to the fairy garden design.

There are so many options for hardscapes; one of my favorites, to cover the surface of the soil, would have to be Fairy Garden Rock. The pebbles make it easy to form a platform for placing miniature accessories. Another hardscape product I like to use is the Glowing Fairy Glass Gravel, which is light-colored sand. After the gravel sits in the sun for a while, it manages to produce a gentle glimmer in the darkness of the night. A miniature garden with a glowing pathway to the fairy house would be a particularly fun addition to a downtown space.

Another idea is to line up a row of Square Tin Planters. Begin preparing the planters by adding an inch of pebbles on the bottom for drainage. Fill each container with soil and then in each tin, plant a few ‘Parlor Palm’ miniature plants. Surround the plants with the glowing gravel. What an ambiance these containers will create on your dining room table during an evening party!

I know that many of my downtown apartments were lacking that homey feeling. If I could have added anything to my environment, it would have been some miniature plants to create a cozy and comfortable green space.

Miniature Gardening offers a variety of accessories, fairies, plants, garden tools & furniture to create enchanting miniature landscapes. Fairy houses at miniature-gardening.com are an exclusive collection of handcrafted stone fairy houses designed for outdoor fairy gardens. Miniature Gardening's Fairy garden accessories and ideas will inspire you to create your own fairy garden.

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