Heather’s life-long love affair with fairy folklore is still going strong

Twenty years ago, Heather Beckerling of the Umdoni retirement village began her fairy garden.

It all began on her 50th birthday when she was living in Johannesburg and had a fairy themed party.

“I’ve always loved fairies and Enid Blyton who wrote many fairy tales,” she said, “I lived by the saying if you want children to grow up to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.”

For her birthday, Heather received many fairy items. These gifts started taking up space in the house so she decided to start putting what she could outside and combine her love of fairies and gardening into one and created her first fairy garden. Each corner of her garden told a story – either from a fairy-tale, or something Heather would make up.

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Later in life, Heather and her husband moved down to Pennington. They lived in a nature reserve for a while and at one stage Heather’s fairy garden was spread across one and a half acres of property. Seven years ago, the couple moved into the Umdoni retirement village.

“After moving here, I have given a lot of the fairies away because I thought they may be pinched, but after all these years, they have all remained in place,” said Heather.

Many residents at the village, delight in a visit to Heather’s fairy garden. She loves having people over, especially children, so this motivates her to do more in her garden to improve upon it each time. “I have to make sure that the garden is in a presentable condition all the time as residents sometimes bring over their guests to have a look, and if something is out of place, I get disappointed as I want the garden to look its best for those who come all the way to see it,” she explained.

Heather used to do a lot of pottery and made a lot of the little houses and knick-knacks for the fairy garden herself. She said one of her concerns is that the items required to extend and maintain the garden is becoming a little costly these days. “It’s shocking just how much I spend on just glue alone, but it’s still worth it for me.”

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When it comes to maintaining the place, Heather works to deadlines. Once she knows that there are going to be people coming over to view the place on a set date, she really gets into her work and can spend hours upon hours in her garden each day until she’s one hundred percent satisfied with the way it looks.

One of the biggest nuisances in the garden are mongooses and not monkeys as many would believe. “Yes from time to time, monkeys pay the garden a visit, but they mainly just play with some of the fairies and little toys that look like food,” she explained, “The mongooses, however, can be very destructive as they dig up the ground everywhere.”

When there are mongooses around, it’s not just one or two that are destructive but 30 to 40 at a time.

A large number of the fairies in Heather’s garden were actually gifted to her by friends and family. Some all the way from places such as England, Florida and even Iceland.

“These fairies then become more treasured and precious because they were gifted to me by people who actually thought about me and the garden on their travels,” she said. “For this, I am very grateful.”

In each little part of her garden, Heather likes to add a little humour such as putting all the mice together and naming it ‘Mouse Ville’. She then puts up little boards with sweet sayings and poems to help breathe life into the garden.

Some of the many themes in the garden include The Lord of the Rings, Beauty and the Beast, The Faraway Tree and even Frozen to name but a few.

One of the most intriguing parts of the garden would also have to be a little corner where a fairies birth and different life stages are depicted.

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