Magical Gardens by Patricia Monaghan

Author:Patricia Monaghan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: witchcraft, wicca, spells, herb, herbal, herbalism, garden, gardening, magical herbs, herb gardening, plants, nature, Pagan garden, natural, natural magick, natural magic
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2012-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

[contents]

Gardens from Myth and Legend

Gaia

Of her I sing, the All-Mother,

old and rock-hard and beautiful.

Of her I sing, the nourisher,

she on whom everything feeds.

Of Gaia I sing. Whoever you are,

wherever you are, she feeds you

from her sacred treasury of life.

Bountiful harvests, beautiful

children, the fullness of life:

these are her gifts. Praise her.

Homeric hymn to Gaia

With every passing year, gardening has become a more popular hobby in America. Every year thousands of new gardeners discover the delight of savoring the first vine-ripened tomato, celebrating the abundance of strawberries even a small bed can provide, and filling vases with fragrant flowers from just outside the patio door. More experienced gardeners find increased access to plants, seeds, and supplies, as well as enjoying the access that the Internet brings to rare specimens.

Many gardeners, both new and experienced, focus their efforts on edibles. The locavore movement encourages people to eat from their own region and seasonally. Nothing connects you to your homeplace more fully than eating what is fresh and local, whether you grow it yourself or buy at a farmers’ market or local grocery. Those involved in the earth spirituality movement are usually drawn to locavore eating, and locavores often find themselves becoming interested in other expressions of connections with the earth.

But gardens nourish more than the body. Throughout history, “pleasure gardens” have offered a feast for the eye and the spirit. These need not be large or expensive to create, for devoting a portion of the garden to meditation and contemplation of nature’s beauty can be as simple as setting aside a corner with a bench and some flowers. The gardens that follow have been designed to inspire gardeners of all levels of experience to create tableaus in honor of earth’s magical beauty. In some cases, suggestions for herbs or vegetables have been offered as alternatives to purely decorative plants. There is no reason not to mix edibles with decorative plants, and readers are encouraged to explore possibilities beyond what are offered in this book. But the gardens in this book were inspired by traditions of gardens whose purpose was meditation, ritual, or aesthetic enjoyment. Many fine books will help you design your vegetable garden, but few others focus on the nurturance of the soul.

Each of the following gardens honors a mythic figure. Many are designed around plants whose names or traditional uses reflect the myth or divinity. In most spiritual traditions, names are important, so in addition to color, height, and cultivation needs, the names of specific varieties have been chosen to enhance the garden’s depth of meaning. Putting a Madonna lily in an Aphrodite garden might make aesthetic sense, but when appropriately named varieties are available, why not use them? Suggestions of named varieties are also made because, despite (indeed, because of) the vast number of options available online today, it can be extremely difficult to locate plants with appropriate names. Not only are there hundreds of options to sort through, but also an individual might not recognize potential acquisitions. In a

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