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Apartment Garden Blues (Blog): Fairy Gardens

Details: Published on Friday, March 29 2013 20:31; Written by Alexandra Martin

Fairy gardens are a big fad today, where people create small container gardens filled with miniature furniture and plants. I see these gardens at pretty much every garden store or event that I go to, and there are even workshops dedicated to creating fairy gardens.

Some people put little fairy statues in the garden, but others leave them empty in an attempt to attract real fairies to their garden! (Of course, I don’t think anyone really believes that – it’s just for fun.) Many cultures believed in fairies (or still believe in them), and all believed something a little bit different. In Celtic folklore, fairies were tiny people driven out of this world by invading humans (we tend to do that, don’t we?). Some fairies stayed in our world, but they hide and are hard to see because they wear flowers for clothes. These mischievous creatures play tricks on us in our gardens, like moving things around. To make up for invading their home for many hundreds of years, people today welcome fairies to their gardens by making a comfortable place for them. Making a home and garden area for tiny fairies can be a fun project, especially for small-space balcony gardeners who don’t have a ton of space.

Planting a fairy garden is similar to creating a terrarium. Choose a container (shallow but wide containers work best for this type of mini garden). Then fill the container with a layer of small pebbles or marbles, charcoal and then potting soil. Then you can fill in your fairy garden with plants (of course, add small plants or those you can prune easily, and some groundcover for the fairy grass) and accessories. There are so many accessories for fairy gardens that you can do pretty much anything you want! I’ve seen tiny homes, furniture, birdbaths, ponds, arbors and trellises, plant pots, gardening equipment, mailboxes, Jack-O-Lanterns, stone walkways and tire swings.

For your first fairy garden, you can make it easy on yourself and either get a fairy garden kit or attend a workshop.

Say hi to your fairies for me!

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Alexandra Martin is a professional writer from Southern California who grows vegetables, herbs, lots of aloe vera and one giant Boston fern in her balcony garden. She also grows dracaena, pothos and English ivy indoors. She loves traveling and birdwatching in addition to gardening.

Apartment Garden Blues (Blog): 5 Techniques for Great Butterfly Photos

Details: Published on Friday, March 22 2013 20:13; Written by Alexandra Martin

Monarch Butterfly I love butterflies. Who doesn’t? But one thing about them really bugs me. You have to really work hard to get good pictures of them. Plants are easy to get a picture of. Go outside when they’re blooming and lighting is good. Then snap a picture! But butterflies move around, and that makes them difficult to photograph. Here are five techniques for getting that perfect butterfly picture, even with a regular digital camera.

1. Go to a place with lots of butterflies. Larger public gardens are easier for this, rather than your small garden with just a few flowers. Butterflies are migratory, so look up when they’ll be in your area.

2. Photograph during a cooler time of day (morning or evening). Butterflies are more active when it’s warm, and their favorite temperature is 82 degrees.

3. Once you spot a butterfly that has landed on a flower, approach slowly and wait for the butterfly to settle and hold still. Don’t cast a shadow over your butterfly subject, or it will fly away.

4. To get the sharpest image possible, take a picture parallel to the butterfly’s wings.

5. Be patient! Take your time, and you’re sure to get at least one great picture.

Read about plants that will attract butterflies to your garden>>

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Alexandra is a professional writer from Southern California who grows vegetables, herbs, lots of aloe vera and one giant Boston fern in her balcony garden. She also grows dracaena, pothos and English ivy indoors. She loves traveling and birdwatching in addition to gardening.

Apartment Garden Blues (Blog): Fu Dogs

Details: Published on Friday, March 15 2013 20:04; Written by Alexandra Martin

Foo Dog Statue At the entrance to Chinese or Japanese gardens, you may have seen those two lion dog statues and wondered what they were for. In the West, we generally just call them Fu Dogs, but they are called “Shi,” meaning “lion” in Chinese. In Japanese, they are called Komainu, meaning Korea dogs, possibly because they were introduced to Japan through Korea. These guardian lions have stood in front of special places since the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD). They stood as protectors and guards.

The Fu Dogs come in pairs. The male lion represents yin and sometimes has his mouth open. He rests his paw on a ball, which represents the structure behind him that he protects. The female (yang) has a cub under her paw, which represents what she protects: those who live inside the structure behind her. The placement of the guardian lions is critical, according to feng shui design. When looking in the same direction as the lions, the male should be on the right and the female on the left.