GC Styles A Kid-Friendly Fairy Village Out of Found Materials

In the spirit of our summer theme of Balconia (bringing the garden into small spaces), we decided to set up a fairy village on a rooftop. Fairy houses are a time-honored tradition among kids that never seem to lose their charm; the endless fun comes from sourcing bits and pieces of used materials from around the garden, imbuing them with new, enchanted properties. We’re big fans of reuse and thought this DIY garden project was an excellent opportunity for a bit of summer house cleaning.

We built our fairy village using leftover bamboo cutlery from the GC Floral Salon, and we used our seed matchbooks as the fence for a tiny vegetable path. Elsewhere, we lined up stems from cut flowers to build the walls of a home, constructed a bridge out of the odd ends of branches, plucked scented herbs to thatch one roof (and used leftover petals from a discarded bouquet for another), and incorporated bits of pottery and bark to mark out pathways. Check out the rest of our village for inspiration in the gallery below. This is a easy kids project that makes use out of broken pottery (as long as it’s not too sharp) and found items like shells, pinecones, and interesting, small sticks. Use your creativity and don’t be afraid to get dirty!