A charming little book in this series, full of winsome fairy children and rhymes about familiar flowers to be found in an English garden. I delight in the colors and details in the flowers and the fae. ( )

I wasn't 100% sure what we were going to get with this collection as it was the first of Barker's non-seasonal selections of fairies, but she collected this batch with surprising skill. Or maybe less surprise, since she's long proven that she knows her flora! Here, we are presented with a rainbowed selectionof flowers that I am sure most readers will recognize because they are in fact typical garden specimens. I'm no garden expert, as our "garden" was coprised of trees/bushes or plants that grew edibles, but I definitely remembered all the flowers that I saw in other people's gardens like snap-dragons and bachelor's buttons. Since Barker was working with a plentiful selection of specimens I would judge this to be her most colourful set of fairies yet, and we can tell that she was feeling inspired by the vibrant colours and inventive compositions. We might have learned about seasonal growing patterns in the previous collections, but I much prefer this more unrestrained collection! ( )

The illustrations in Flower Fairies of the Garden are gorgeous. The verses are merely 'meh'. Here are the fairies in this book, in alphabetical order:

Candytuft Fairy
Canterbury Bell Fairy
Cornflower Fairy
Forget-me-not Fairy
Gaillardia Fairy
Geranium Fairy
Grape Hyacinth Fairy
Heliotrope Fairy
Lavender Fairy
Marigold Fairy
Narcissus Fairy
Periwinkle Fairy
Phlox Fairy
Pink Fairies
Polyanthus Fairy
Scilla Fairy
Shirley Poppy Fairy
Snapdragon Fairy
Sweet Pea Fairies
Tulip Fairy

I have 1980s editions of some of the Flower Fairy books and the reproductions in 1990 edition is visably superior. ( )

Wonderful, whimsical world of Cicely Mary Barker. ( )