Photo : Mary and Andrew
Did You Know? National Fairy Bread Day is 24 November (yes it's a thing - and you can support it here!) To celebrate this nostalgia-filled delicacy of white sliced loaf covered in multicoloured hundreds and thousands/sprinkles/real sugary magic, we take a closer look at fairy plants - and the source of the Green Fairy herself. Join us!
Fairy Dust, Fairy Lights
Who wouldn't want some fairy dust magic sprinkled over their life, to make their deepest wishes come true? And to light their path, a thousand twinkling fairy lights sparkling in the darkness... Mazus are dainty little groundcover plants, with small spoon-shaped leaves and two-petalled flowers on slender stems.
Mazus Fairy Dust is pure white with bright yellow freckles; Fairy Lights a gentle shaded lavender-lilac. Both colourways are great for spreading a little sparkle around taller plants, tumbling over the tops of patio pots and planters, and softening the edges of paving and paths.
Fairy Lights
Making a beautiful companion for the Mazus fairies is Polygala Fairy Lights, also known as milkwort. It's a neat little groundhugger too, adapted for life in alpine regions, and cheerfully bright in flower. The little blooms are small but abundant, and pair purple and yellow like a miniature slice of fairy bread. Plant it in a basket, a patio pot, around the edges of a rockery - wherever you need some happy colour!
Fairy crassula
This fairy is no delicate little thing; fairy crassulas are built for hot dry conditions and surviving neglect. This one has bold broad leaves painted plum-purple on the reverse, as a dramatic contrast to the clouds of white fringed flowers that appear like stardust.
Green Fairy
The essential ingredient in every 19th century flaneur's drinks cabinet, was the source of the Green Fairy herself - la Fée Verte. It's the mystical magical deep green elixir that gives the drink absinthe its notorious properties and aniseed flavour, and it is distilled from the wormwood plant. As well as helping fin-de-siecle decadents acquire transcendence, wormwood was and still is a multipurpose healing plant, full of medicinal benefits; and a rugged hardy silvery shrub for sunny spots and poor soils.
Wormwood is not the most beautiful of names, so let's call it by its botanic name, Artemisia. The original Artemisia was an ancient Persian queen and courageous tactical commander of a naval fleet.
Her famous namesake, Artemisia Gentileschi, was an Italian Baroque artist who ran a successful workshop in Naples, breaking through many social and professional barriers. These are the kind of feisty fairies we want at our Fairy Bread party!
Scarlet Sprite
Everyone loves a grevillea, and Scarlet Sprite is a favourite for little birds like honeyeaters and spinebills too, as their tiny beaks can feed at the flowers with ease. Each individual flower is as tiny as Tinkerbell, but together they completely cover these little shrubs.Like a fairy godmother, these grevillea bushes are protective and nurturing, their dense needle-like foliage providing welcome shelter and cooling shade for small creatures.
Sprite
This Sprite is a native water gum, so we guess that makes it a water sprite? These aquatic fairies also go by the names nymph, naiad, and mermaid, and in mythology often give up their fairy magic to find true love, or a mortal soul, with humans. Tristaniopsis Sprite has plenty of fairy magic to sprinkle in your garden - evergreen foliage that transforms into pumpkin-orange; smooth chocolate bark, golden flowers - and all in a petite pocket-sized shrub for stepover hedging and edging.
Firesprite
The yang to water sprite's yin, grevillea Firesprite glows in red and gold, flowers unfurling as they open like flames licking the logs in a grate. It's big and bold, fast-growing, and well over head-high full grown - a formidable fairy indeed.
Purple Pixie
Pixie, pixy, or piskie, these mischievous party-loving faerie folk bring joy, dance, and not a little chaos in their wake. Loropetalum Purple Pixie brings you zero chaos and lots of joy, with plum-purple leaves all year round, and whimsical pink flowers like the pompoms of tiny cheerleaders. Perhaps it's the pixies, dancing inside? Gently move a branch and see if you can spy them, hiding...
Green Pixie
This petite perky Green Pixie is perfectly proportioned for patio planters and indoor pots. It's a Syngonium, a kind of tropical trailing vine, which goes by the common names of arrowhead vine and goosefoot plant.Although the leaves look more like lovehearts than arrows and birds' feet to us. We love this one's bright kelly-green and snow-white contrast.
Pink Pixie
Close your eyes, wish very hard...you're dreaming of an evergreen shrub that grows in cold, in drought, in frost, at the coast and in windy weather; that stays green and lovely all year; and glitters with tiny cherry-pink flowers in spring. Completely non-mischievous, positively helpful, plant Escallonia Pink Pixie and you'll feel like a magic spell was just granted for you.
