Author: Ellen Dugan
Trade Paperback, 268 pages
Publisher: Llewellyn
Publication date: February 2003
ISBN: 0738703184
Price & More Info: Click Here
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Gardens have probably been associated with witches and cunning people for centuries. Many people probably expect a witch to have a "green thumb" simply because witchcraft is often associated with herbs and natural magick. Wiccan witches reinforce this notion by incorporating a love of nature into their religion. Green thumbs, however, are seldom a matter of birth or luck. Gardening is a skill -- and, like any other skill, it is learned by study and experience. Ellen Dugan is a Master Gardener and witch and her book, Garden Witchery: Magick From The Ground Up, provides practical advice on both gardening and garden magic.
This book isn't an instruction manual on gardening or magick or religion. Instead it is a collection of plant and garden folklore, gardening advice, plant magick, garden crafts, ideas, personal experiences and more packaged in an easy to read and enjoyable format. That said, Dugan is a Master Gardener and there is a lot of basic and practical gardening information in this book. It just isn't organized for studying. It's organized for doing.
Here are just a few of the many topics covered in Garden Witchery: specialty gardens (anyone for a Samhain Pumpkin garden or a garden of poisonous plants?), flower and herb spells, enhancing Wiccan Sabbats with material from your garden, keeping a gardening journal, garden crafts (how about a fresh holiday wreath?), container gardens, and gardens as sacred space. Along the way you'll also learn what magically useful plants do best in sun or shade, how to gather herbs and flowers while doing the least harm to the plant, folklore and fact about many plants, and much more.
Garden Witchery combines solid, practical gardening advice with folklore, magick, and fun. While reading this book will not make the reader a Master Gardener or a master magician, it will help those interested both in magick and gardening combine their interests and -- with a lot of work -- turn their "spot of garden" into something the neighborhood can admire and they can put to use in their magick.
Reviewed by Randall
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