From Water Table to Fairy Garden

This is a project that is great to do with kids!!

My girls outgrew their water table at Grammy’s house… And by that, I mean they’ve moved on to controlling the hose directly and making a wet mess that way.

To give the water table a new purpose, I decided to copy an idea I’d found on Pinterest, but in our own way. Most fairy gardens will have, ya know, plants. However, we didn’t want to use any dirt in ours since water would naturally pool pretty easily and we didn’t want a muddy mess. Instead, here’s what we came up with.

Usually materials that Grammy already had at her house, we rummaged through the craft room and found spray paints, white rocks, black rocks, aquarium rocks/marbles, shells, and some coco fiber liner. I also went to the garage and grabbed some extra pea gravel. Since our water table was basically one level, I also took cheap little pots and used them to make “islands” in our garden. To give all these rocks some life, we found some fake succulents and also some sticks from the yard. Add in a few spare outdoor decorations, and that was it!

Step 1: Clean and deconstruct the water table. I took a hose to the whole water table and used a little dish soap to scrub it clean. After wiping it dry, I took out the little spinner that was in the center of our table. Then I also removed the stopper that kept water in the table – I want it to drain now!

Step 2: Spray paint the water table. To make the top of the table look like land, I sprayed the outside, top, and inside lip a brown color. For the high section in the middle and also the little “pouring” section, I used a grey color to make these look like mountains. (Depending on the dividers of your water table, you could choose different colors for different sections too – perhaps green for a lawn or blue for a section that will hold water as a lake.)

I didn’t worry about painting the bottom of the water table’s top, since this would be covered by rocks, marbles, and pots anyway.

Step 3: Add pots. First, I spray painted a bunch of cheap pots/containers so they would sparkle and stand out from all the rocks. Once these were dry, I wanted the pots in first so I could figure out how I wanted these “islands” to be arranged. I also wanted them in first to avoid having to shove the rocks around as I tried to get the pots to sit flat. Since one container was going to be a pool, I definitely wanted that one to sit flat.

Step 4: Add rocks and marbles. We started with the white rocks, then the black rocks, making different little sections for the two. (I’m told they will be for day and night lounging. 🤷‍♀️) We REALLY liked the look of the aquarium rocks, so those went around the container that would become the fairy pool.

Step 5: Add details. It might have been easier to draw on the mountain rocks before adding things into the water table, but at least this way I knew how far down to draw. Using a permanent marker, I quickly drew little boulder rocks all over the areas that I’d painted grey.

Step 6: Fill pot islands. We put one large rock in each pot to help fill them and hold them in place. Then I used pea gravel and filled them the rest of the way.

You could fill the pots with dirt and plant real flowers in them, but, again, we wanted to avoid any dirt that might cause a muddy mess.

Step 7: Make a fairy house/hut. I took a square pot/container and cut one side to make a door. Then, taking some of the coco fiber liner, we hot glued a piece on top to look like a roof. That was it – very easy.

I also cut a long section of the liner and made a little bridge going from the raised “pouring” section to the middle section where the spinner had been. Grammy was on glue-gun duty, and she glued this bridge right onto the water table.

We then glued the house onto the end of the bridge that covered the pouring section. To really help hold the house in place, I added pea gravel around the sides of the house, and we found a cool rock to place on the roof as well, which added some whimsy to the look of the house.

Step 8: Fill in with flowers/shells/sticks/decorations. First, I spray painted our collected sticks white. While these dried, we got to work sticking the fake succulents into the pea gravel of the pots. We also used one to help pin down the bridge to the center section, cutting a little hole in the liner over where the spinner had been installed.

Grammy had a few outdoor decorations that we stuck in the pea gravel too, and an old lantern turned upside down sat on the rocks to become a cool “fairy beehive,” or so I’m told.

For around the fairy’s pool, we placed a bunch of old seashells, and these also covered the top of one of the pots because that is, of course, where beach fairies live.

When the sticks were dry, we shoved them down into the pea gravel inside two pots on either side of the garden, and these trees gave nice height to the…landscaping, I guess you’d say.

Really (as I hope is evident by our choices), you can use any decorations to make anything you want in your fairy garden!

The last detail to add was water in the pool, and then it was time to play!

I love that this was a good group project, and the kids got to use their imaginations and creativity. I like that we found a new, “big kid” use for the water table. Also, I love that we could use spare materials to make a great, low-cost, mostly natural home for fairies! 😆

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