Introduction
I currently have the privilege of tending a garden. My relationship with our garden is quite unique for I have lived here, in the same house with my parents, since I was four years old, with only a couple of brief periods of living away. I’m forty-four now. So I’ve been here almost forty years.
I’ve played in the garden, ignored the garden, done bits and bobs, but only since the health of my parents has deteriorated and Covid struck, have I taken gardening and building a relationship with the garden spirits seriously. I’ve had successes and failures and learnt quite a few things along the way.
Here, I will provide an account of the processes I’ve been through and provide some guidance for others on working with spirits of the garden.
What is a Garden?
For anybody setting out to get to know the spirits of their garden, it’s helpful to know what a garden is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is ‘an enclosed piece of ground used to grow flowers, fruit, or vegetables.’
Thus, a garden is born by the act of enclosing pre-existing land. Often, a garden belongs to a house and is one amongst many in a row on a street. Sometimes, gardens are created as stand-alone green spaces, such as allotments, community gardens, botanical gardens and garden areas in parks.
The History of the Land
Because a garden is an enclosed piece of ground on pre-existing land, it is helpful to get to know what the land was used for prior to its enclosure. You can do this by looking at old Ordnance Survey maps and at your local tithe map (1).
The OS maps for 1910 and 1890 show that there was an orchard on this land. The deeds to our house record it as cherry orchard. In Lancashire, both sweet cherry (Prunus avium) and sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) were grown. In next door’s garden there is a sweet cherry tree – perhaps a descendant. Sweet cherry seedlings are always trying to grow in our garden.
The 1840 OS map and the local tithe map, from 1839, show beforehand it was meadow. It was known as Golden Bank Croft. The land belonged to Malt Kiln Cottage and Farm and was owned by Richard Palmer, who leased it to William Mayor and his son, Robert Mayor, who is listed as owning the field. The large, irregular field patterns suggest that they date back to the medieval period.
The ‘Bank’ refers to the bank of Fish House Brook, which is culverted beneath the gardens of the houses across the road, Bank Parade. It then flows through Greencroft Valley and north to enter the river Ribble at Fish House Bridge. The source of Fish House Brook lies 100m to the south of my house.
I thus see the presiding land spirits to be the Spirit of Fish House Brook and the Spirit of Greencroft Valley, for they are the powers who have resided here long before we spoke those names and created meadows, houses and gardens.
It is likely that Golden Bank Croft was farmed as hay meadow. The way this worked was that fields were grazed as pasture over the winter, then in spring the cattle were shut out and the grasses were let grow and cut in the summer.
Typical species of a lowland hay meadow in Lancashire include grasses such as: sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum oderatum), meadow foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis), crested dog’s tail (Cynosurus cristatus), red fescue (Festuca rubra) and Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus) and wildflowers such as: ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), common knapweed (Centaurea nigra), yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor), great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis), meadow vetchling (Lathrus pratensis), and meadow buttercup (Ranunculus acris). Remnants of some of the more pervasive of these species are found in our lawn and on local parks and green spaces.
I perceive the guardian spirit of my home and garden to be the former guardian of Golden Bank Meadow and the surrounding land on this side of the brook.
It is likely that, before it was enclosed as meadow, this area would have been mixed deciduous woodland, dominated by oak, with some patches of carr wood. This is suggested by the old oak trees that are remnants of former hedgerows in Greencroft Valley and by place-names such as Broad Oak, Oak Avenue, Oaklands Drive, the Oaks, Alderfield, the Carrs and Carr Wood.
The History of the Garden
The history of a house and garden is usually passed on from its previous owners. This is how we learnt our house was built during the 1940s. If you don’t have this information, you can check the Ordnance Survey maps.
I believe our garden, when we moved in, in 1985, was close to the original design. It had a lot of conifers, shrubs and ornamental plants. All the conifers have been removed due to poor condition and my dad dug most of the plants up.
A few things have survived. A pair of apple trees. Camellia, lilac and eschalonia that have grown to tree-like proportions. Fuchsia and astilbe. Cloves in a pair of pots. Of my dad’s blunders only the raspberry patch remains.
When I was a child, I was far more interested in my toy horses and make-believe equine worlds than I was in the garden. I dug up the lawn to make water jumps and banks for my Playmobile cross country and show jumping competitions and ran round leaping courses made of garden canes myself.
I loved wild nature, which led me to conservation volunteering aged thirty. I didn’t care much for gardens or gardening until I developed a passion for growing native wildflowers. This expanded to include cultivated plants and fruit and vegetables when I began volunteering at Let’s Grow Preston.
Still, I ignored our garden, as I didn’t see it as ‘mine’. This changed when Covid struck and all my volunteer work parties got cancelled. By that time, it was in a state of neglect due to the deteriorating health of my parents.
Building a Relationship with a Garden
My relationship with our garden started off thorny. Quite literally. The cultivated blackberry bushes at the top of our garden had taken over the path. I battled them back. I battled the ‘weeds’. I was angry with the garden for growing so wild and I was angry with my parents for their neglect. The spirits named me ‘Mrs Angry Gardener’. We didn’t start out very well.
Yet, as time went on, with the help of Creiddylad (2) I learnt to listen better to the garden and its needs and to the intelligence of the plants. When my comfrey plant spread from its pot down the side by the compost bin, I allowed it to grow there to provide food for pollinators and to add to the compost. I let honesty grow toward the back of the garden. When the blackberries died, I created a fern garden on advice from Creiddylad and Gwyn (3), populating it with ferns and hart’s tongue growing elsewhere as ‘weeds’.
I replaced the flower beds with a wildflower patch, growing ox-eye daisy, ragged robin, red campion, common knapweed and foxgloves from seed. I added betony and common agrimony from an ecology colleague and blue geraniums from Let’s Grow Preston and Newgate Nursery (bees love them).
When the red campion became dominant in the wildflower patch and threatened to take over the garden, I began picking the seedlings to grow to plant in Greencroft Valley and translocating the larger plants there.
As time has gone on, I have come to know the spirit of the garden better, if something comes up in ‘the wrong place’, to ask its purpose, where else it could go. I have become more one with the movement and succession of plants.
Prayers and Offerings
My personal approach to prayers and offerings is one of practicality and simplicity. I speak morning prayers of praise and evening prayers of thanks. I treat watering and feeding the garden as an offering, doing it prayerfully. When I place items on the compost heap at the bottom of the garden, I feel it is an offering of sorts for the fay who abide in the ferns and the lilac.
I used to make offerings of mead to Gwyn and the garden spirits beneath one of the apple trees. When the hellebores wilted, I found out that alcohol damages trees and plants. It causes dehydration, strips protective layers and kills beneficial soil bacteria. Herbal tea now forms a more suitable alternative. I also, occasionally, offer fruit. This gives nutrients back to the ground. However, I don’t do this often, due to sightings of a brown rat.
Our spirits appreciate arrangements of stones, such as my mum’s ‘god stones’ (4), as shown by the mosses and lungwort who have grown around them.
Others might prefer more elaborate ceremonies and rituals. Always check in with the spirits first make sure that what you want aligns with what they want.
Shamanic Journeys and Dreams
It is also possible to journey to the spirits of the garden. On my journeys, I have not come across a single ‘spirit of the garden’ who has presented in an anthropomorphic or phytomorphic form. Yet, I have heard a ‘voice’ that seems to speak with the deeper being of the wider area.
I have been shown that I’m a mere instrument in the greater design of the land. A mid-wife and foster-mother to the plants, a nurturer, a waterer. That my existence and doings here are transient against the ancientness of this place and of its inhabitants, some who outdate humans by millions of years.
I have been shown that willowherb (Epilobium) will never stop spreading and horse tail (Equisetum) will maintain its vast subterranean system beneath the earth for millennia. My existence here is more ephemeral than the so-called ephemeral plants who will continue in their seed whereas, with me, my line ends.
As I have built a deeper relationship with the garden, it has appeared more often in my dreams. I have dreamt the Leylandii are back again. I have dreamt strange bees and wasps. I have dreamt a pond in the middle of the back lawn that my parents will never allow but might be created by a future owner.
Presence and Listening
Of all things, I have found that the main need of our garden has been that I pay attention and listen. That, instead of being in my head, listening to my internal chatter, I am embodied and present amongst the trees, plants and creatures.
In this state, I am more at one with the garden, more attentive to its needs. I notice things better. For example, how the types of bees on the oregano – honey bee (Apis mellifera) and white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) – differ from the types of bee on the common knapweed – red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum) and hairy-footed flower bee (Anthothora plumipes). I notice a hornet mimic hoverfly (Volucella zonaria) for the first time and wonder what its appearance means.
Taking the time and effort to be present and listen, whether whilst gardening or sitting or standing still, for me forms the foundation of good relationship. It also opens the door to deeper mysteries and more intimate disclosures from the spirits. Thus, Blake’s ‘Heaven in a wildflower’ can be found in any garden.
*If you enjoy my writing please consider supporting me on Patreon HERE.*
Footnotes
(1) Tithe maps were created following the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 to replace the ancient system of paying tithes in goods with monetary taxes.
(2) An ancient British and Welsh goddess of sovereignty and fertility who I perceive to be connected with flowers.
(3) Gwyn ap Nudd, ‘White son of Mist’, earlier known as Vindos, is the King of Annwn / Faerie and Creiddylad is his queen.
(4) The stones, in order, from the top left, represent Creiddylad, Nodens, Anrhuna, Vindos / Gwyn, Maponos / Mabon and Gwythyr.
