Let the Minikin Scale Help You Determine Sizes in the Miniature Garden

So, you have set about creating a new themed area in your miniature garden. You are planning to include some miniature houses and beloved garden fairies, as well as fairy garden accessories and miniature plants. With the plans drawn up, you start to set up your fairy garden, but something is amiss. A few of the fairies are too big to flutter through the miniature house door and some of the patio furniture towers over the homes! The differences in the sizes do not look right. It will be back to the drawing board for the garden this year.

Have you ever had a situation like the one described above? Many of us have had similar experiences, even with just one or two miniature accessories that were unmatched in size. It can be both surprising and frustrating to find that the scale of your fairies and miniature houses do not match. Luckily, for times like these, there is a helpful solution. The Minikin Scale is a simple table created by miniature-gardening, which groups fairies, miniature houses, and other fairy garden accessories into four size brackets: mini, tiny, teeny, and micro.

How to Use the Minikin Scale 

When you are considering purchasing a miniature house, or even adding one of the latest pieces to your fairy garden, you will want to consult your Minikin Scale chart and match the product to the correct scaled category. How do you do this? Many sellers of fairies, miniature houses, and fairy garden accessories will list their scale online or on the packaging. For example, a “mini” house with a scale of 1:12 has been built to a measurement that each inch of the house represents twelve-inches in “real” life. If you have an adult female fairy, she might be about five-inches tall, much like a woman at five-feet. You will want to be sure that this fairy is paired with a fairy child of the same scale, or else you could end up with a fairy child that towers over its mother, or only comes up to her ankles!

When there is no mention of a scale, one trick is to consider the miniature house entry as your guide. When miniature-gardening was creating the Minikin Scale, the first measurement used to identify proportion was the door height. Since most real-life doors are six and one-half feet high, a 1:12 scale miniature house would have a door height of six and one-half inches. This size miniature house would be considered a mini. Use the table to calculate the additional dimensions.

Mixing It Up

Of course, once you have the Minikin Scale for reference, you do not need to choose just one size for your miniature garden. You can mix it up! Some gardeners like to section-off their fairy gardens into different areas by size. You could create entire worlds inside of the fairy garden itself by utilizing both mini and micro-sized fairy houses. Perhaps a path of mini houses and accessories leads to a hidden area full of micro fairies, as if the residents of the fairy garden have been building a fairy garden of their very own!

You can also use larger-scale items for your main miniature garden, and save teeny and micro sizes for containers placed around your yard or home. Micro miniature accessories are ideal for diminutive gifts, such as glass ornaments, miniature gardens built inside books, jewelry making, or other DIY projects. Let the Minikin Scale be your guide when planning fairy gardens and other projects, but do not let yourself feel constrained by the sizing. Many miniature houses, garden fairies, and fairy garden accessories fall between the categories. For those moments, you can “go with your gut.” If it looks like the fairies can co-exist peacefully, let them be! Begin with the Minikin Scale as a guide and then trust your instincts when determining sizes in the miniature garden.