Fairy garden created in memory of girls' mother

Main photo (from left): Sophie, Hailey, Nicole, Amelia, and their dad Greg Mason, beside the memorial garden the family built. (supplied).

Don’t let anyone tell you fairies aren’t real. They are, at least to the granddaughters of Donna Wainwright-Maw.

The girls lost their mother a year ago and building a memorial garden for her—one which would also be home to fairies who would look after her—became a family affair.

It all began early last summer with Wainwright-Maw’s ingenuity. She knew how crazy her granddaughters were about fairies. She bought fairy-like items from dollar stores and garage sales, and made numerous bids on items that could fit the bill from the Huntsville Dollar Auction page on Facebook.

Wainwright-Maw’s husband and her son, Greg Mason, the girls’ dad, also built veggie boxes for the girls, giving each one their own little plot to plant what they wanted. A lot of sunflowers went in, as it was their mother’s favourite flower, noted Wainwright-Maw.

The girls, ages 6, 7, 9, and 12, also got a lesson in horticulture by starting their vegetables of choice from seed and watching the seeds slowly turn into plants until it was time to plant them in their box outside.

Each girl has their own veggie box in the garden. (supplied)

Working in a garden is said to be therapeutic, and that’s certainly been the case for the girls.

“The kids are doing well, my son is a wonderful father,” said Wainwright-Maw.

The garden is not quite finished, but it is definitely taking shape.

Wainwright-Maw is glad she discovered the dollar auction site because when she looked on places like Amazon she had no idea how expensive fairy items could be.

So far, she’s bid on and won two little cabins and a gnome garden with a beaded waterfall. “Another lady had an old cookie jar. It had a crack in it so I bid on it for a dollar so daddy went and he glued it all up, and so they’ve used that. Other items included a barn house, fairy steps, a big mushroom, and a couple of fairy doors…”

She was so pleased that she sent out a thank you note to everyone on the site she had bid from with photos of how the items had been put to use.

“Thank you all so much for your kindness and making four little girls extremely happy. At the end of the day they were worn out as were we but not without their daddy (my son) thanking me for all the crazy bidding that I’ve been doing for them, so he asked me to dance to his favourite song “what a wonderful world,’” she wrote on the page.

The outpouring of support on social media was incredible and many people posted comments, mostly about how wonderful the memorial garden is.

“I was very overwhelmed,” said Wainwright-Maw. She said it brought tears to her eyes.