MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) - In Lele’s Fairy Tale Garden, fairy tales and nursery rhymes come to life.
Constructed by Leigh Elliott, the Marietta resident uses the garden in her backyard as a tool to teach her grandchildren literature.
“I built little vignettes in the garden that depict the stories or nursery rhymes,” said Elliott, who is married to Dr. John Elliott, a retired dentist. They have three grown children and six grandchildren, who delight in the fairy garden’s design.
Cinderella is an example of a vignette in the garden that illustrates a castle with blue bed and her blue dress and another area with mice making a pink dress. A porcelain figure sits in front with the prince putting a shoe on Cinderella’s foot.
The garden is an interactive tool.
“The children are free to get out there and play. They’re really free to play in it. It’s like a garden of dollhouses almost,” she said.
Elliott initially made a garden five years ago in a corner of a larger kitchen garden for a granddaughter’s four-year-old birthday party. “I was going to do one corner of the kitchen garden as a fairy garden and I couldn’t stop,” she said.
She said the purest fairy gardens are made from things found in nature without man-made materials.
“(A pure fairy garden) is how I started it. I slowly converted to man-made things,” Elliott said.
Today, the garden includes items like porcelain figurines depicting fairy tales.
In the early stages, the garden featured only fairy tales that had fairies as part of the story, such as “The Tooth Fairy,” ’’Pinocchio” and “Peter Pan.” Later, she added vignettes that included other stories the grandchildren requested like “The Three Bears” and “The Three Little Pigs.”
“Last year, my granddaughter said, ’let’s just make it all fairy tales and nursery rhymes. That’s when I added ’Snow White’ and ’Princess and the Pea,’” Elliott said.
Over the years, Elliott expanded the garden and today it measures 40-feet-by-26-feet.
“A lot of the younger children don’t know the fairy tales and many of the nursery rhymes any more. A lot of little kids that come through here will look at ’Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’ and they don’t have a clue what ’Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’ is. Their moms and dads and grandmas get excited about it. I think it prompts some discussion about nursery rhymes and fairy tales,” Elliott said.
Although children are aware of some stories because of the Disney movies, Elliott emphasizes the original stories as much as possible. “I tell the grandchildren that Disney took these stories and built on them, but they’re not accurate with the originals. I can’t be totally accurate in telling the original stories because many of them are grim and scary. I want them to realize that in literature, the story is different than what is portrayed in the Disney movies,” Elliott said.
“I only pretend (the garden) is for the grandchildren,” Elliott lovingly added. “I love doing it myself. I have the best time out there.”
___
Information from: Marietta Daily Journal, http://mdjonline.com/
Please read our comment policy before commenting.