Basement Window-Well Fairy Garden

My workshop, and my husbands "Mancave Office" are in our basement.  If you have a basement you know what a dead space window wells can be. They usually look something like this.

My husband and I thought it would be fun to do something with the window that is visible from both my workshop and his office.  We decided on a little fairy garden.  Since the window well is surrounded, we knew we would need shade loving plants.

We also knew we should have good drainage (since we don't want moisture getting into the basement) so we started by putting a layer of rocks at the bottom of the window well and cleaned the sides of the surround with soap and water to get it ready for spray painting. This was the original color we were going to use but it was too dark and wanted a blue sky background.  This looked more like a night sky.

Here is the surround after painting it sky blue. The lighter color on the left is just reflection.

Here it is after I spray painted some white clouds over the sky blue.
We then spread two very large bags of garden soil over the rocks and evened it out.

I planted Coleus and Impatiens around the back edge of the Fairy garden and added a few accents like bunnies, a birds nest and a little house.  I will add more accents to this garden, but my husband said "a little at a time".  Of course he's right:).

To add some height to the garden I put some trailing plants in pots and elevated them with more terra cotta pots. As the Impatiens grow up and trailers come down, the pots should be mostly hidden.  I also put in some dead curly willow branches to look like trees.  Using dead curly willow is very important.  Live curly willow will root and take over a space very quickly.  

Here is the little Barn-house I put in. I placed a couple of rocks on either side and planted Johnny ups on either side of the rocks.  In front of the house I spaced Corsican Mint. It's a very low growing ground cover that will hopefully spread into a front lawn.

Here is a shot of the whole Fairy Garden, what do you think?  The color scheme is purple, pinks, and white.  I'll try and remember to post pictures as the plants grow.  What a fun project this was.  I sure hope we get some Fairies this summer, or at least some fireflies :)