By Julie Bawden-Davis
Long before humans roamed the forests, fairies are said to have taken up residence in the cavities of trees, forming fairy houses where they took refuge. Dating back to the Middle Ages, fairy folklore says that these little beings possess supernatural powers.
Many believe that fairies come from the elements—in fact, from Mother Nature herself. For that reason, it makes sense to add fairies to your garden. Even better, adding fairy gardens to your landscape elevates the magic and mystery of your landscape.
How to Make Your Own Fairy Garden
Whether you believe in fairies or not, anyone can make their very own fairy garden. A wide variety of herbs work well in these mini wonderlands. In fact, the diminutive nature of some herbs, like thyme and oregano, makes them fairy garden favorites.
To create your own container fairy garden using herbs and fairy garden accessories, keep the following tips in mind.
Dream a Little Dream
The first step to creating a magical miniature garden is to dream up what you want the garden to be. A good way to do that is to start with a theme. Just like when you throw a party, knowing the theme allows you to plan and design the garden better.
The theme could be just about anything. Do a little daydreaming, and see what comes to mind. While doing so, ask yourself where you’d like to go if you were a fairy. A mountain retreat, maybe? A secret garden, perhaps? Or how about a beachside resort? The only limits are your imagination, and that’s truly limitless.
Choose Your Fairy
There are a wide variety of fairy figurines available to reside in your fairy garden. The type of figurine you choose can also help dictate the theme. Generally, if you’re planting a small fairy garden, it’s best to choose just one fairy and a supporting character or two like miniature ceramic animals.
Select Accessories
Once you have a theme, the ideal types of accessories quickly spring to mind. Using a cottage garden theme as an example, you will want to look for items such as a white picket fence, miniature stepping stones, a birdbath, and a gazebo or trellis.
Decide on Plants
For your cottage garden, you can’t use large flowering plants like foxglove or larkspur as you’d find in a human-sized landscape, but you can bring flowers to your Lilliputian paradise with small blooming plants like Erodium spp. (stork’s bill, heron’s bill) and miniature roses (Rosa sp.). Many trailing herbs, such as the aptly named ‘Elfin’ thyme, also flower in the spring. Polka Dot Plant (Hypoestes) adds color to your fairy garden all year long.
Pick a Focal Point
The secret to creating a magical miniature garden that captures the attention of humans and fairies is to remember that in fairyland, less is more. For an effective, eye-catching miniature garden, be selective in your accessory and plant choice. Avoid packing too much into your garden, as it will look cluttered. From the handful of items you’ve selected, choose a plant or accessory to which the eye will be drawn. Then design the garden around that focal point.
Add Action and Tell a Story
The way to put life into your fairy garden is to add some action. Set the stage in your fairy garden by creating the illusion that something is going on. The secret is to give the viewer the “idea” of movement. What creates that illusion is how the fairy relates to her (or his) environment.
Think about how you position the fairy in relation to the environment. Is she pointing up at a miniature tree? Or maybe she is interacting with a fellow animal figurine. Position a fairy with her arms outspread facing a little kitty looking up at her intently, and while creating action, a story comes to life. The fairy has looked for her kitty all afternoon long and finally found her!
Whatever you place in the fairy’s line of sight helps tell the story. Putting a fairy boy holding a tipping teacup as he sits talking to his dog is another great way to add action while telling a tale.
Planting, Care, and Maintenance
Choose a container with drainage holes that has enough space to arrange your planned scene and is at least eight inches deep. Use a high-quality potting soil. When choosing plants, ensure all of them are either full sun or shade.
Plant first, then add accessories. If you are going to put in a path, scoop out a half inch of soil and fill in with gravel or stepping stones. After planting, water well.
To keep your fairy garden plants within bounds, pinch and prune them on a regular basis. Don’t feed the fairy garden too frequently, as that will cause excessive growth. Keep the plants healthy with an application of a well-balanced, organic fertilizer every two to three months.
Join Julie on Thursday, March 16, at 1pm Eastern for her webinar: Fairy Gardens Throughout the Ages (and How to Make Your Own). Our webinars are free to The Herb Society of America members and $7.50 for guests. Become a member today, and enjoy all of our webinars for free along with access to the webinar library with over fifty program titles. To register, visit https://www.herbsociety.org/hsa-learn/herb-education/hsa-webinars/
Photo Credits: 1) Hidden home in the forest floor (Askoldsb, dreamstime.com); 2) Logs with little doors (C. Moore); 3) Thymus serpyllum (Kingsbrae Gardens, Creative Commons); miniature roses (The Oregonian); Erodium sp. (Macleay Grass Man, Creative Commons); 4) Tree with tiny door (C. Moore); 5) Fairy with cat (J. Bawden-Davis); 6) Fairy with dog (J. Bawden-Davis).
Julie Bawden-Davis is a bestselling garden author, speaker, and University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Parade.com and The Los Angeles Times, where she had weekly garden columns. She has also written for Better Homes and Gardens, The Orange County Register, The San Francisco Chronicle, Organic Gardening, The American Gardener and Wildflower Magazine. Julie is author of several gardening books, including Fairy Gardening: Creating Your Own Magical Miniature Garden, Southern California Vegetable Gardening and Southern California Fruit Gardening (SoCal Year-Round Gardening Series), The Strawberry Story: How To Grow Great Berries Year-Round in Southern California, Indoor Gardening the Organic Way, and Reader’s Digest Flower Gardening. She is also founder and publisher of the website, Healthy Houseplants.com. Julie gains inspiration from puttering and planting in her Southern California garden, which was certified in 1999 by the National Wildlife Federation as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat.
Bay laurel, 
Propagating bay takes patience as it is very slow to germinate and grow. The Herb Society of America’s guide to bay offers a method for propagating bay laurel.
Bay laurel branches are pliable and lend themselves to making wreaths. The leaves are also used for potpourri. Many of us remember the old-fashioned way of keeping flour and grains insect-proof by adding a bay leaf or two to the container. The essential oil of bay is used in perfumes and soaps.
Last winter the urgent care center diagnosed me with the flu, and I’ve never been quite as sick as I was for that month. I spent several days in bed and used all sorts of herbal remedies to support healing. Daquil/Nyquil just made me feel worse and went straight into the garbage.
Supposedly, four thieves from Marseilles were robbing plague-ridden corpses without getting sick. They are thought to have been perfumers with access to and knowledge of essential oils, herbs, and spices.
To learn about other herbs that can help keep you healthy during cold and flu season, join Nicole Telkes for her webinar, Supporting Immunity with Herbs, on 
As an herbalist I’m interested in many aspects of plants – from their use in herbal and conventional medicine, to lore that informs us how those in the past viewed the plant. I knew that Taxol was a cancer drug made from the yew tree, but when a friend mentioned its poisonous aspects, I decided to dig a bit deeper.
This all sounds well and good, but if we look at the history of yew, we see that it didn’t always have the best reputation – quite the opposite. Whereas Taxol belongs to a chemical group called taxanes, another group, the taxines, is quite deadly. These toxic compounds are found in every part of all 
While researching, I stumbled upon an interesting “explanation” for how yews became poisonous, written in the 17
is also an evergreen, long-lived landscape tree, reaching a height of 40 to 60 feet tall and a width of up to 25 feet wide. Its pinnate leaves close up at night. The branches droop to the ground, making it a graceful shade tree. A mature tree can produce up to 350-500 pounds of fruit each year. It is native to tropical Africa and is in the Fabaceae family. 
The tamarind tree grows well in USDA Hardiness Zones 10-11 and therefore, is not commonly seen in the continental United States, except in southern Florida. It produces a showy light brown, bean-like fruit, which can be left on the tree for up to six months after maturing. The sweet-sour pulp that surrounds the seeds is rich in calcium, phosphorus, iron, thiamine, and riboflavin and is a good source of niacin. The pulp is widely used in Mexico to make thirst-quenching juice drinks and even beer. It is also very popular in fruit candies. The fruit is used in Indian cuisines in curries, chutneys, meat sauces, and in a pickle dish called tamarind fish. Southeast Asians combine the pulp with chiles and use it for marinating chicken and fish before grilling. They also use it to flavor sauces, soups, and noodle dishes. Chefs in the United States are beginning to experiment with the sweet-sour flavor of tamarind pulp. Did you know that tamarind is a major ingredient in Lea & Perrins® Worcestershire Sauce? 
The fruit pods are long-lasting and can be found in some grocery stores, especially those serving Hispanic, Indian, and Southeast Asian populations. 
used as fodder for domestic animals and food for silkworms. The leaves are also used as garden mulch. 
The fruit pulp is useful as a dye fixative, or combined with sea water, it cleans silver, brass, and copper. In addition to all of these uses, school children in Africa use the seeds as learning aids in arithmetic lessons and as counters in traditional board games.
Celery seed comes from a variety of celery that is different from the celery (Apium graveolens) we see in grocery stores. The seed comes from an ancestor of celery called smallage or wild celery. The smallage variety is native to the Mediterranean area and the Middle East and is grown in India, China, and France specifically for the harvesting of its seeds. The seeds are very small: 760,000 seeds make one pound. They have an aromatic, earthy smell, and a flavor that has a touch of spiciness. The seeds are used whole in brines, pickles, and marinades and in salads like coleslaw and potato salad. They can be added to breads, soups, and dressings, thus giving a celery taste without the bulk of fresh celery stalks. The seeds are used in French, New Orleans Creole, and other cuisines around the world. They are also ground and mixed with other spices to create unique herbal blends like Old Bay Seasoning, celery salt, 
Cajun seasonings, etc.
Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda is a celery flavored soda that is made from celery seed. This celery inspired soda has been around since 1868, when it was developed as a tonic that was touted to be “good for calming stomachs and bowels.” It paired well with salty, fatty foods, like pastrami, and became popular in New York’s Jewish delicatessens and with Eastern European immigrants whose cuisines already included fermented botanical beverages. Dr. Brown’s is being noticed again as healthy botanical drinks become more popular. Author Stephen King once said “Sooner or later, everything old is new again.”
Settlers also brought cultivated raspberries that were native to Europe with them to the new colonies. In 1761, George Washington moved to his estate in Mount Vernon where he began to cultivate berries in his extensive gardens. The first commercial nursery plants were sold by William Price in 1771. Jefferson planted raspberries at Monticello on numerous occasions beginning in 1774. In 1735, Irish herbalist K’Eogh described these uses for raspberry: “An application of the flowers bruised with honey is beneficial for inflammations of the eyes, burning fever and boils…the fruit is food for the heart and diseases of the mouth.”
In 1850, the Christmas tree phenomenon spread to the United States when Sarah Josepha Hale, who also wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” published a similar engraving in her monthly magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book. Hale “Americanized” the engraving – removing Victoria’s tiara, Albert’s royal sash and moustache, and the boxes of German biscuits from beneath the Christmas tree.
Commenting on ivy, Perry said, “The song “The Holly and the Ivy” has its roots in an English tradition from the Middle Ages. The soft ivy was twined around the more prickly holly in arrangements. Not only was this for aesthetic purposes, but also the holly symbolized males and the ivy females, and their combination represented a good-natured rivalry between the two.
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