Last week I spent £20 on a solar powered resin toadstool fairy house. For the last seven days I’ve been deciding whether to take it back to the shop or not for the following reasons:

1. Joni seemed underwhelmed when I showed it to her. I was expecting excited shrieks and instead got a very level, “that’s nice Mummy”. For £20, I expect more.
2. It was £20.
3. I can’t really afford to spend £20 on a garden ornament.
4. It’s made of resin. I wasn’t really sure what this was and after Googling it, I’m still not sure. But I think it’s a type of plastic and some of it maybe tested on animals. But some resin is made up of 50% plant and vegetable matter and some resins are vegan and not tested on animals. I’m just not sure what type of resin this particular mushroom fairy house is made from.

In the end I decided to keep it. It now forms the centrepiece of the new fairy garden we’ve made.

Apart from the questionably eco-friendly mushroom house, there are many features in the garden that will definately benefit our back garden environment.

• Plants to attract bees and butterflies – we planted French lavender, petunias and geraniums, plus lots of wild flowers, that’ll take a few weeks to grow, but that the wildlife in our garden will love.
• A bird bath – this was originally from Joni’s official My Fairy Garden set but we’ve repurposed it as a bird bath (or fjord as Joni preferred to call it).
• A boat – this not-so-obvious addition to the fairy garden has been sat gathering dust on our bookshelf for about 10 years. I was going to  throw it away but parts of it were broken but instead, it’s now a sailing vessel for garden fairies (who have wings, so don’t need to sail anywhere).

I like to think that every time the kids help me in the garden they learn that flowers and food don’t just appear – they have to be grown.

This is what I like to think but in reality, most of the time spent gardening with the kids involves me yelling at them for throwing soil at each other or filling the bird bath with stones.

*Update

One week in and the fairy house has died a death. The solar light had a lose connection which meant it only light up if I held it down. I wasn’t prepared to spend my evenings sat in the garden with my finger pressing on a fairy house solar panel. So the house went back to the shop.

Niether Joni or Evan noticed, thus confirming that the toadstool fairy house was more of a pointless purchase for me, not them.

Enjoy sleeping on the boat fairies!