Fairy Garden Class - Garden Under $10, Part 4

For my fourth and final "Garden Under $10" class series this month, I wanted to round it out with an honest to goodness, from the ground up account of cost. In many of my other classes, I typically will use a container I already have or decorations I've used in past gardens and I realize that not all of you have these type of things on hand. The total cost of this garden is actually $11, but if you're going to be picky about going one dollar over... I don't know what to tell you. The point of this class is to prove that you can create something beautiful and living with very little money.

My shopping list consists of:

Two bags potting soil - $2

container - $2

Two bags of decorative sand - $2

Decorative rocks - $1

(the above were all purchased at the .99 cent store)

Two plants from Home Depot - $4

TOTAL = $11

The total could have been lower if the .99 cent store had plants, which they sometimes do, but this wasn't the case.

Because of the large size of the container and the limited amount of soil I had, I first placed a small pot upside down with a saucer on top to fill in some empty space. The saucer allowed a level base to place the soil on and get this project started.

Here I've planted the two chives purchased from Home Depot. Chives are hearty plants, give a unique look to your garden and if you don't mind the smell of onion, it's a good option (I love using them in my Ocean scenes). I've placed an old T-shirt over the potting mix which allows water to reach the soil yet keeps the decorative sand from sinking (saving money because you don't have to keep replacing it).

I chose fine blue sand to represent water and a tan sand to represent, well, sand to create a shoreline scene. I placed the rocks in clumps around the plants and the large rock in the middle was from my yard. A few simple finger strokes make the illusion of motion in the "water."

The large pods I added were plucked from the ground near my place of business and add the illusion of sea creatures.

 Finally, I had some very small shells from a previous project that I spread throughout the scene to give it a pop of color. Colorful pebbles can be found almost anywhere if you take a good look. And you could even save yourself that $1 on small rocks if you took a morning to go for a hike and collect some out in the wild. Wild rocks are free and that will be one more thing to mention when someone comments on how nice your garden looks.

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