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Photo Courtesy: Courtesy Mary Martin
One teacher’s attraction to a Hendersonville, North Carolina, garden has grown to help build a magical, enchanted place.
Mary Martin is the kind of teacher who is always looking for ways to make magic happen for anyone who wants to learn. When she began taking her sophomore special-education students to Bullington Gardens in 2002 to meet their occupational study requirement, she had no idea that she was walking into a place that would inspire enough magic for her students and the world beyond.
This 12-acre, public botanical garden, located in Hendersonville, North Carolina, partners with the schools and the NC Extension services to “enhance life skills for children with mental and physical disabilities through horticultural therapy.”
But, during eight years of once-a-week trips to the Garden, Martin began to sense that there was more than just the magic of better learning opportunities there. When she retired in 2010, she became a Bullington volunteer. Each year, the magical feeling grew stronger. One day, Martin and the other volunteers had a magnificent, magical brainstorm.
“I’m not really sure how we came up with the idea of a fairy village,” Martin says. “Maybe the fairies sprinkled their dust on us.” Students were enlisted to clear a path into the small woodland and the Fairy Team was assembled.
The completed Fairy Trail leads visitors to a village where the wee magic folk live. Along the way, one can spot fairies practicing yoga, attending church, shopping and sleeping. Soon, the fairies were hosting special workshops for children to create fairy crowns and houses. There was a small waiting list.
Then, the pandemic hit, Bullington Gardens grew silent, and the fairies were left to themselves. Martin says that as a result of what could only be more fairy magic, a notice about their village and Bullington Gardens appeared on a site called Only in Your State. The phone lines to the gardens blew up with requests for visits and the Fairy Team panicked. They weren’t set up for COVID or big crowds.
No matter. A Fairy Tent was added to the entrance so volunteers could ensure that people were masked and socially distanced. Trails were cleaned and the village polished. The trail re-opened on June 1, 2020, and by the end of fairy season (late August), over 7,000 visitors had walked through.
Martin, whom co-workers call “Fairy Mary,” says, “One thing that makes the fairy village at Bullington so special is that the doors in some of the trees along the path open and there’s something magical behind each one.” Everything on the trail is handmade by local artists.
Those artists include Martin and her husband, who create structures from found and natural materials.
“I married a man who can take my thoughts and make them into real things,” she says.
Her favorite? A second-hand shop they created from an old boot and stocked with objects like thimbles and marbles that fairies might find useful.
Martin says that it often seems like adults enjoy the village even more than kids. It’s not unusual to see a reluctant husband coming out the other side with plans to build his own fairy village for the children or grandchildren at home.
“The fairies have got you,” Martin says. “People want to take the magic home and put it in their gardens.”
The most special feature of the trail is the mailbox where children can send letters to the fairies. The Bullington Fairies will answer any that include a return address. Most young writers ask about the Tooth Fairy or send greetings to Tinkerbell. The more curious write to inquire if fairies are real, and if so, why are the ones in the Fairy Village made of plastic?
“We aren’t plastic,” the Fairies write back on specially designed postcards. “We come alive at night, when there’s no one around. During the day, we must be very still so we can rest. Please don’t touch us.”
At the end of August, the Fairy Crew spirits the village away.
But, Martin says, “it’s hard to keep school kids focused on pollinators and propagation when there are fairies nearby.” During the winter months, the Fairy Crew sprinkles more fairy dust and magic on the buildings until everything is spit spot ready for spring.
The fairies have lived at Bullington Gardens for five years. The 140 volunteers know that when COVID shut the world down, “Mary’s fairies” kept Bullington Gardens alive. Yes, Bullington Gardens is a magical place. Mary knows it, the fairies know it and now over 7,000 visitors a year know it, too.
The story above first appeared in our May / June 2022 issue.
