She started bending these little fairies as a goodbye to her mother. Almost 30 years later, she's making her last ones.
Beverly "Bev" Tatum (67), a retired schoolteacher from the Blue Ridge Mountains, has been hand-shaping dandelion sculptures in her late husband's workshop for nearly three decades. Her hands can't manage the fine wire work much longer — and her final collection is leaving the barn now.
Sparta, North Carolina. The barn behind Bev Tatum's farmhouse smells like cold iron and dried lavender. Late afternoon light slants in through the gaps between the boards. On the workbench: a row of about twenty finished little fairies, each one frozen mid-dance, each one holding up a hand-bent metal dandelion the size of a small grapefruit.
Bev — who answers to "Bev," not Beverly, and certainly not Mrs. Tatum — sits on the same stool her husband Henry used to sit on. She's wearing a wool flannel and a pair of reading glasses on a chain around her neck. When she talks about the sculptures, her hands keep moving on their own — bending invisible wire in the air.
"I never set out to make anything for anybody but my mother," she says. "It just sort of kept going."
"It started as a goodbye gift."
In the spring of 1996, Bev's mother Edna was in hospice care in Boone, an hour north. The dementia had gotten bad. Most days Edna didn't know who Bev was anymore. But one afternoon Bev took her on a slow walk across the field behind the hospice, and Edna stopped, picked a dandelion off the grass — the full, round kind — and blew on it.
"She got most of the seeds off in one breath. Then she looked at me and said, 'Look, baby. I wished you something.' She didn't know my name that day. But she remembered the wish."
Edna died three months later. The day after the funeral, Bev walked into Henry's workshop, picked up a length of steel wire, and bent her first little fairy holding a dandelion. She set it on her mother's grave on what would have been Edna's 80th birthday.
"I just wanted Mama to have her wish back."
She kept the second one for herself. Stuck it in the flower bed by the back porch. That should have been the end of it.
"And then the neighbors saw it."
About two weeks after the cemetery, a neighbor down the road saw the one in Bev's garden and walked up the drive to ask about it. Her sister had just lost their father. Could Bev make one for her?
Bev tried to say no. Then she said: I won't sell you one, but I'll make you one.
That was the start. Over the next few years, word got around in the way it gets around in small Blue Ridge towns. Bev made them on Saturdays after her lesson plans were done — mostly as gifts for people who were grieving, or moving, or had a grandchild they wanted to give something meaningful. By 2002 she had a small stand at the West Jefferson craft fair every May. "I just put a sign up that said 'Wishkeepers — by donation.' That's what I called them. Couldn't think of anything else."
By the time Bev retired from teaching in 2018 — 38 years in fourth and fifth grade science classrooms — she'd made well over three thousand of them.
"I never meant to make anything for anybody else. It just kept happening. Somebody would lose somebody, or move, or have a granddaughter who didn't know what a dandelion was anymore — and they'd ask. So I'd make one."
She still calls it a hobby. "I'm not a sculptor. I'm a retired schoolteacher with a workshop full of wire."
What makes a Wishkeeper different
These aren't mass-produced. Bev works with a small fabrication shop in the Smokies for some of the structural components and detail pieces, but everything that gives the sculpture its character — the dandelion head, the curve of the stem, the dark finish on the fairy, the way she leans into the wind — Bev does herself, by hand, on her own bench.
- Hand-bent dandelion head — over 80 individual wire spokes per flower, bent and seated on the same small jig Henry built in 1998. No two are exactly identical.
- Hand-darkened iron and brushed steel — the fairy is finished in a deep, near-black patina with subtle blue undertones; the dandelion seeds and wings are left in bright brushed steel. The contrast catches the light like a silhouette against the sky.
- Fairy detail set by hand — each fairy figure is individually placed, positioned, and finished by Bev. The whole sculpture leans into the breeze the moment you plant it.
- Garden-real size — 25 to 45 inches tall including the stake, depending on design. The dandelion head is about 6 inches across — almost exactly the size of a real one.
- Made for the wind — the dandelion catches the breeze and the fairy "leans" with it. "That's the whole point," Bev says. "If it doesn't move, it doesn't feel alive."
- Eight designs — Bev has shaped eight different fairy positions over the years. Some lean forward as if blowing a wish. Some hold the dandelion still. Her favorite, "the quiet one," just stands looking up.
"Most people end up with more than one."
Bev didn't plan the bundle idea. It happened on its own. Customers started writing to ask for a second piece — one for a friend who'd just lost someone, one for a daughter who'd just had a baby, one for a corner of the garden they'd just cleared. Some women buy four at a time and plant a "little family" of them along a path. One customer in Vermont planted eight along her back fence after her husband passed away, and sent Bev a photo of them at sunset that Bev keeps pinned above the workbench.
And this is the last season any of them will ever be made:
These are the last Wishkeepers Bev will ever make. When the final pieces leave the workbench, the barn closes for good.
"I'm not trying to clear inventory," Bev says. "I'd rather these go to people who'll plant them than have them sit in a box."
"I want Lily to remember what a dandelion does."
Bev has two grandchildren who come over most weekends. Noah is five and mostly interested in chasing the chickens. Lily is eight, and she is the one who asks the questions.
Last spring, Lily walked into the barn while Bev was finishing a flower head and asked, in the way only eight-year-olds ask:
"Grandma, when I'm grown up, will kids still know what a wish is?"
Bev didn't answer right away. She finished bending the last spoke. Then she set the dandelion down and said, "Honey, that's why I'm still making these. So at least the ones in the gardens will remember."
Kids today blow on phone screens. They've forgotten what a dandelion does. I'm not trying to fix the whole world. I just want every garden to have one little place where a wish still belongs. — Bev Tatum
The workshop is closing this fall.
Bev is 67. The fine wire work — bending each of the eighty-plus spokes that make up a single dandelion head — used to take her ninety minutes per piece. Now it takes her two and a half hours, and she can only finish one a day before her hands give out.
"My daughter Hannah told me back in January: 'Mom, you've made it. You can stop.' I'm starting to think she's right."
Hannah, 39, an IT consultant in Asheville, runs the small online shop — "because Mom refuses to learn the internet."
What's on the workbench right now is the final batch. Around 620 Wishkeepers, finished or near-finished, are all that's left. When they're gone, the barn closes for good.
"I'm not going to make these in a city studio. I'm not going to teach somebody else to do them. They were made here, by me, in my husband's workshop. When the last one ships, that's it. Thirty years of dandelion wishes — and a good run."
What customers have written to Bev
- I planted mine on my mother's birthday last May, right where she used to sit and shell peas. Every time the wind moves it, it looks like she's still telling me something. Worth every penny.
- Bought one for my daughter when she lost a baby last year. She put it in her garden and told me, "Mom, I think I'm going to be okay now." That's all I can say about it.
- I'm 38 and I bought one for myself, which felt silly until it arrived. It catches the light at sunset in this incredible way. My husband keeps making jokes about it but he's the one who took five photos of it last week.
- Got the 4-pack and planted them along the path to my back porch. The grandkids come over and "visit" them. Honestly, I haven't seen those kids look up from a screen for that long in years.
- The way the light hits the silver dandelion against the dark fairy — it looks like something from a French chateau garden, not from suburban Pennsylvania. Six months in, still gorgeous. I'm getting two more before she stops.
- I cried when I opened the box. I don't really know how to explain it. I'd been having a hard year. It just looked like exactly what my garden needed.
"Plant it in your garden. Watch what it does. If the wind doesn't catch it the way I said. If the finish doesn't grow on you. If it doesn't bring you something — send it back. Full refund. No hard feelings."