Читать книгу The Real Witches’ Garden: Spells, Herbs, Plants and Magical Spaces Outdoors - Kate West - Страница 6

Merry Meet!

If I were to ask you to describe a Witch’s garden you would probably envisage climbers growing up the walls of a thatched cottage, a profuse array of colourful and traditional country-cottage-type plants, and herbs to tend all kinds of ailments. But the reality is often nowhere near the dream. For just as Witches appear just like everyone else, so their gardens are as varied as those of other people. They could be large or small; they may be a scrap of concrete, a window box or just the kitchen windowsill. They are often overlooked by neighbours, close to busy roads and shared with children and pets. We describe Witchcraft as a nature-based spirituality, but most of us do not live in an ideal rural idyll with a scenic cottage and enough land, let alone time, to have an established garden full of healing herbs and ‘witchy’ plants. We have busy lives with many commitments and little time to tend and love our herbs and plants. Whilst our Craft seeks to be one with the elements and the land, our personal ‘land’ may be a small scrap of ill-lit soggy soil, a wilderness of rocks and concrete, and full of discarded toys or the evidence of a love of dogs and cats! As Witches we seek to live as a part of the world, not apart from it, and hence we must be realistic. However, we can make the most of what we have, and tend it with a love of the land and of the Goddess, rather than wishing and waiting for some kind of ideal.

Firstly, let me say that this is not a gardening book in the usual way. Here I am not talking about ‘how to garden’; making fertilizer, landscaping, installing water features, cement and decking, but rather how to make the most of your garden. How to use it as a part of your Craft, to make it a sacred place in its own right. A place where you can meet your Gods, where you can grow plants to help you work your magic. A place where you can pre-pay and repay the Goddess and the God, and the land, for what you take and are given. There will be ways of using your garden to enhance your Craft and ways of using your Craft to enhance your garden. Yes, there will be suggestions on what to plant, and how you might like to arrange them, but in the context of working from what you have, rather than creating a whole new outdoors!

Those of you who do have the luxury of being able to make a fresh start, in the fashion of so many modern gardening programmes, will be able to use the ideas here, but those of you with constraints on what you can do will still be able to take the ideas that do fit and discard the rest.

Whilst I have given some plant suggestions I am aware that, with a readership which includes the whole of the English-speaking world, you may not be able to grow the same things. So I have tried to give ideas of the types of plant rather than always being specific. It is my hope that, whatever your kind of soil type, climate, landscape, etc, you will be able to make use of this book. I also hope that you will try to do so using plants native to your area, as these are the ones with a magical connection to your land, your Goddesses and your Gods.

Let me also say that, in my life I have had the pleasure of keeping gardens of all shapes, sizes and conditions. These include a moderate-sized rural near-idyll, a walled but landscaped and shared green patch, many windowsills, 30 square feet of shaded concrete in an area of heavy industrial pollution, a landscaped, gravelled and decked modern travesty of the concept of contact with the earth, and just recently over 180 square metres of untended land given over to thistles! I’ve also worked in gardens where the concept of natural growth has been allowed to run riot, those with enough clay to start a decent-sized pottery, others where the half inch of topsoil covers several tons of concrete and rubble, and even one where the soil was made of, just for once, real growing-type earth! I’ve also shared my garden with dogs, cats, ardent sunbathers and various other life forms.

In this book I hope to incorporate ideas for all types of garden, or growing area, in ways which are compatible with having a full and busy life. Ways of being at one with the land, of sharing it with our near and dear, and still being able to work it in honour of the Goddess and the God. I will include lists of plants and herbs, not so that you can rush out and buy them all, but so that you can choose those which are most applicable to your life, your needs and your Craft.

And just as you can use your garden to celebrate and enhance your Craft, so too you can use magic to enhance your garden. Not everyone, not even those who practise the Craft, is blessed with ‘green fingers’, so here I shall also look at the magics you can work to enhance your ‘green life’: the seasons and times for the best results; spells for sowing, planting and growing, to protect delicate plants, to deter pests and even to influence the weather a little; the Goddesses and Gods who might look more favourably on your piece of the earth. This book is not intended to be the ultimate answer to all your gardening queries, but rather a starting point to blending what you have with what you would like.

As with all the other Real Witches’ books this one is written for real people with real, busy lives who probably don’t have huge amounts of time or money to spend on their gardens but who still want to become closer to the earth. Even if you have no interest in the Craft at all I hope that this book will be of interest to the gardener who seeks a more natural approach to what is, for some, our only work with nature.

Blessed Be

Kate