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A Child's Fairy Garden

© Virginia Marin

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Most of us know that fairyland is in the domain of folklore, and folklore is found wherever a culture is, but where, exactly, IS fairy land? Fairyland is in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, though its precise location is elusive. It may be on a moonbeam, or in the wood. Look to the highest peak or the desert low. Hidden in a garden's nook or open in your favorite book:

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of a book
Another child far, far away
And in another garden play.
But do not think you can at all
By knocking on the window call
That child to hear you, he intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look
Nor yet be lured out of a book.
For long ago, the truth to say
He has grown up and gone away.
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
(A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson)

Children need a garden. Not an adult garden, but rather a garden of magic. A garden of whimsy. A summer garden. A garden that shouts, "Let's pretend!" Little hands need a fairy garden.

Three decades ago, we lived on the wind-swept rocky cliffs of the Monterey Peninsula, south of San Francisco and north of Carmel. There, growing out of the rich earth paraded countless profusions of brilliant orange and black California Poppies, their wind dances always in perfect sync, and without intermission - this was God's garden, which needed not man's attention.

But our daughter, Sarah, wanted a faerie garden to which the butterflies would come. A fairy garden is of man, and needs man's planning and perpetual care. Now, butterflies, like everything else, abound in California, though being cliff dwellers did present a small problem: butterflies need protection from wind. This was solved with a windbreak of giant wooden sunflowers, which served a dual purpose of also setting the garden's theme.

Next came flowers. Every gardener knows that butterflies are attracted to sweetly scented flowers in hues of blue, pink, white, red, orange, purple and yellow, but I have often wondered why a dog, which possesses a brain and a wee bit of soul, cannot see colors, except possibly for blue, while butterflies, with no systems are apparantly color sensitive. I suppose an evolutionist would say this is by adaptation. A creationist would say that is the way God made them. A child would probably say because they like them.

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