Yahoo! It's the first day of spring! We made it through another New England winter! For those of you who like to garden, time to pull out the tools and the wheelbarrow, right? I wish. Look out the window in the above picture. We just got 10 inches of snow from a snow storm yesterday. Drat!
Now look at the foreground of the same picture. What is that? It's a miniature zen fairy garden! Here is my first article I wrote on the subject. Essential Attributes of a Zen Fairy Garden
What is so nice about this kind of garden is that if your climate or weather is not cooperating, you can still have one and work with it any day of the year. If you have no yard outside you can have one of these. If you are injured, handicapped or elderly, depending on what you can or can't actually do at this point, you may be able to have and tend to one of these. If you have limited time or a limited budget, you should be able to have this kind of garden!
I stayed clear of of this sort of thing for a long time because I didn't like what I saw. I am very fussy about textures, colors and forms. And at the same time, I want a garden to be captivating and beautiful. But, then recently, I thought of and defined a hybrid garden, one that takes principles from both a fairy garden and a zen garden. And, that, I fell in love with.
Now, a month after creating it, my miniature zen fairy garden is very healthy, and is actually starting to fill out in places. Most of all, it looks beautiful from all directions (this is one of the requirements I have for this kind of garden).
Here is what the garden looks from the north side.
Notice the attractive textures and shapes that are being used. You'll see the same kind of thing on the south side.
The main goal of this hybrid garden is to create something that is very pleasing to the eye which can actually calm you down and let you escape for a moment or two. One other crucial requirement which makes this possible is to get object proportions correct.
Notice the size of the birdhouse relative to the ground cover and the garden bench. Look at how the type of vegetation that is both above the rock and below it make the rock seem like a boulder or a mountain ledge. The net effect of good proproptions is the garden looks very believable and therefore interesting.
If you'd like to get more details including how to make a miniature zen fairy garden, I have a new little book on it which is available from Amazon! How To Make A Zen Fairy Garden