Fairy Gardens and the Movement of Wonder
What if, instead of scaring the pants off kids at Halloween, we enchanted them?
NEW! The enchanting Halloween Fairy Garden is back for its 4th year! We’re keeping an eye on the overnight developments in the little enclave. Looks like some sprucing up is underway to delight the little ones in our Carmichael neighborhood. If you’re local (or know someone who is) please come by and say hello. RSVP at the pink button.
I hate Halloween.
Always have, since childhood. I don’t like costumes much, or getting scared for fun or on purpose, and I’m creeped out by horror and gore on display. (I do like getting candy, though.) When our children were small, we diligently made costumes by hand from classic stories and childhood imaginations: a kitty, a cowboy, a carrot. The Jack of Diamonds. A blue kangaroo.
We’d put out a few jack o’lanterns, pass out candy, and turn off the porch lights at 8 p.m. As the kids grew up and concocted their own costumes, we had time to get more theatrical. Colored lights, spooky projections on the garage door, and well-timed bursts from a hidden smoke machine awaited our trick or treaters.
But the things we were doing, while fun for older kids, never felt quite right for the little ones. “What if,” we asked ourselves, “instead of trying to scare the pants off kids, we enchanted them?
The First Fairy Garden
With our interest in Waldorf and early childhood education and backgrounds in theater and movement, we had the tools to create something different, an experience with depth and wonder for our neighborhood kids and their families.
So we created our first backyard Halloween Fairy Garden. We invited local preschool families for a not-scary walk-through of our small backyard on Halloween. We even put a little sign out for families walking by on their way to school: “Not scary. For little ones.”
“What if, instead of trying to scare the pants off kids, we enchanted them?
We intertwined little scenes in the backyard ivy using wooden toys from our kids’ childhood and lit them theatrically. Our teenage daughter willingly (!) donned wings to become the Real Fairy. Sitting on a faux fur-covered bench next to a small waterfall, this Fairy cheerfully engaged with the children who approached her, eyes wide, and full of questions: What did she eat? What did she drink? Where did she sleep during the day?
Meeting the Real Fairy was an experience many of these children would recall in detail long afterwards. We’d hear them share memories as they walked past our house: “That’s the house with the Fairy Garden, where the Real Fairy lives.”
The New Fairy Garden
Years passed. Children grew up. We moved to a new town, a new neighborhood.
My husband, retired now, keeps busy in the yard. In front, on a corner bordered by sidewalk and street, we have a little shady redwood grove of four trees. For amusement, he constructed a couple of small “gnome houses” at the base of two trees.
Though we seldom saw them, children passing by on the sidewalk were drawn to these little houses. Over time, small gifts appeared. Smooth colored rocks. Glass frogs. Miss Piggy. A girl with a blond pony tail and a miniature skateboard. Nothing in exact scale, but pretty close.
Imaginations had been engaged.
So the idea begin to grow of a new Fairy Garden, in our new neighborhood, centered around those little structures. We would add detail, create a path, light the installations, and oh yes, we’d need harp music!
Creating the Conditions for Enchantment
We set the stage for a progression of sorts. The classic journey begins with a meeting along the way; someone or something completely outside one’s experience. Out of this comes a personal transformation and finally, a return to where one began. In the Fairy Garden, it is the child (and their family) who take this little journey.
Senses are heightened with anticipation (“We’re going to the Fairy Garden!”), arrival, and approach to the entrance. It’s nighttime, cool and dark, and ahead lies a path of light, warmth, and beauty. Quiet harp music fills the space with ambient tones. The family may need to wait a bit before they can enter, and the anticipation builds. Finally, it’s their turn. Each family crosses a threshold and moves into an illuminated realm of color. The path winds about the base of each redwood tree, where miniature scenes invite a closer look.
A transformation begins as the child beholds the scene. Each fairy house and scene is handmade and original, without reference to any commercial character, story, or brand. For the child, each scene is totally new and unexpected.
First, there’s a family of little people sitting at a table in an old-fashioned kitchen awaiting the soup cooking on a wood stove. There’s a tiny clock on the wall, and a spinning wheel. The path leads on.
A mossy portal at the base of the next tree is the home of a gnome. He stands before a door with his welcome sign, attended by tiny earthly creatures, frogs, and small brightly colored birds.
At the next tree, sitting in front of a closed door on an elevated platform, there are small and smaller fairies. Lighted blue dragonflies trail down the tree. Sparkly birds perch nearby.
The path leads on to the fourth tree, where a bigger fairy is watering her garden. Her front door is open. If you crouch down, you can see a golden treasure sparkling within.
As the child moves physically down the lighted path, anchored in the security of family at her side, she becomes one with each scene. She enters it. She moves inwardly into the scene, creating an enlivened story as her imagination expands to make sense of what she sees at each little house. The adults join in, too, creating a shared experience of wonder.
Finishing the journey, the families exit the world of the Fairy Garden, carrying still that sense of wonder as they return to everyday consciousness.
Responses to the Fairy Garden
Thank you so much for doing this. This is so cool. I love this. I want to live here. Can I go through again (and again, and again)? Wait, I have to run home and get my whole family. What’s that? What’s this? How do you make the houses? This is so well done. He wants to live here forever. Where do the fairies come from? Are you a real fairy? Can we come back? Anytime?
No one asks for candy.
The Afterglow
Later in the evening, after tidying up, we sit in our back garden and reflect on the evening. The “magic” worked, for everyone. The neighborhood and pathway under the trees was so inviting that even teens who happened by with candy bags bulging were drawn in. They went through once and came back later with more friends to go again. Our adult neighbors came by to take a look, then got intrigued, joined the queue, and stayed on to chat by the table with the little pumpkin muffins.
As for the children, the journey and the images they experienced will come back again and again as they remember the feeling of the Fairy Garden.
The movement of wonder is nourishment for the soul.
The Fairy Garden Now
The little neighborhood of the Fairy Garden will continue as an installation so it can be visited anytime.
Right now, in November, it’s very quiet. There are no lights or extra decorations beyond the leaves that fall from above and a few cracked nutshells the squirrels leave behind. The fairies and gnomes are not visible. We like to think they’re resting. The redwoods dance in the wind and raindrops pepper the ground.
If you keep your eyes open for the Garden, you might find it.
Precious, Valerie. Bravo!
Just a wonderful, unique, beautiful presentation that brought our neighborhood to a new level this Halloween. And your article and pictures truly add frosting to an already great cake.