Scary Gardening

Scary Florida gardening is always in season with flying oak trees, hurricane landscape recovery, insects the size of small countries, and horrible invasive weeds that take over a lush green lawn. But in October, scary gardens can refer to the theme of "gothic gardening."

A sense of underlying intrigue is certainly a telltale sign that you've entered a gothic garden. Sometimes you don't even realize you're in a supernatural garden until you notice a few "spooky" or "extraordinary" details like an ill-boding face staring at you from behind a midnight-black bush or come across a moss-covered, beloved pet grave. When you notice that the floral and leaf colors gravitate to the dark side or that the accouterments are somewhat sinister-looking that your hair stands up on your skin, you could be in a gothic garden or is it just be your imagination?

Most gothic gardens aren't that easily recognized ─ sometimes purposely ─ except when confided privately or shown on guided tours during the Christianized Halloween season, also known as the Celtic Samhain (pronounced Sow-en) festival.

Asked recently to define what creates a gothic garden, I first had to think why would anyone want a "scary" garden? Decorating your neighborhood yard to entertain and spook the trick-or-treaters can be great fun for Halloween but that doesn't make it a truly gothic garden. Gothic gardens don't have to be scary, but indeed have purpose and necessity incorporating organic and ancient herbs from which recipes can be traced back centuries to a more simplistic and mythical time.

Eye of Newt, Wing of Bat

Witches were historically bucolic and wise healers; not the ugly, cronish hags that Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Monty Python, and Winifred Sanderson, Bette Midler's character in "Hocus Pocus" portray. The personality of the garden would then rely on the witch's knowledge or specialty. My own experience has shown that a typical witch's garden contains herbs, medicinal flowers, fruiting and blooming shrubs, and beneficial trees. The common flora names can range from ass's ears*, bear's foot*, bull's eyes*, calf's snout*, and dove's foot*. All mystical names for regional plants (Buckland, 1996), so named to protect the naïve and innocent from the plant's toxicity, and more probable, the witch's savvy desire to protect her renowned livelihood. You will find a variety of native plants and weeds, such as dandelions, witch hazel, tansy, chamomile, broom, blackberries, ash and willow in any kitchen witch's garden. The traditional recipes made from Mother Nature's pharmacy would be used to calm colicky babies, fevers, upset stomachs, dispose of head and toothaches, ward off colds and diseases, and soothe farm animal ailments. Sometimes just the scent of the thaumaturgic concoctions hanging from an amulet around a neck would keep everyone ten feet away; therefore keeping that person from contracting anything contagious. Common sense and simplicity is at the foundation of most good recipes, whether a mysterious drug or novelle cuisine.

Creating a Gargoyle Garden

A Goth or gargoyle garden will contain more necrotic plants within their ominous framework, even going so far as to chillingly keep all the dead ones. Death in a goth garden is an appropriate theme. What I have been able to re-use a few times (much to my embarrassment) from freezes or drought situations for Halloween accents are plants that have given up the ghost. These dead shrubs have strong grayish-brown branches, but no leaves were kept near my shed from the previous winter freeze and brought back to life, so to speak, for Halloween. Sticking a few completely lifeless, scraggly bushes in strategic locations with cobwebs floating in the wind are a fun way to recycle and create an eerie atmosphere for the October 31st celebration. Gothic gardens can be easily recognized with their atramentous faux palette. I say "faux" because the color black does not exist in the plant kingdom, although diligent botanists are working on it.

Young or old goths prefer the nighttime darkness, shady fogs, and the dearth of winter flora, while shunning the pastel, frilly, romantic colors of spring blooms, warmth, and sunlight. You will find deep, blood-red burgandies as found in the hollyhocks and daylily families.

The almost-pitch black leaves found with many varieties of perennial coleus, like 'Magilla Perilla', 'Black Dragon', 'Black Ruffle', or the darkest black coleus, 'Dark Star' are arcanely unique in sunny tropical gardens. Vampirish purples of the buddleias, 'Black Knight and black petals of the 'Witch of Endor' irises will contrast nicely with the yellow foliage of the dwarf durante dewdrops. Punishingly beautiful flowers with intentional gory names, such as bleeding hearts, bloodroot, blood lily, and love-lies-bleeding will be blooming their little hearts out in any goth garden worth its' salt. You can also find captivating botanical behavior, such as carnivorous plants, bat plants, cast-iron plants and dragon lilies that smell horrible, for those with iron stomachs.

Gothic Gardens Have Whimsy and Magic

Goth gardens tend to be on the whimsical side as well, so you will see a myriad of mythical creatures hiding in the bushes, possibly fey folke by large mushrooms, woodland sprites in the branches of trees, and butterfly carriages floating in the wind. Feel free to invoke your own dark side in decorating your garden by inviting the sidhe* to visit.

The hardscape decorations could be anything from scary pumpkin faces, bat houses, and pet graves, to demented cement guardians protecting the ground floors of your garden rather than traditional cathedral cornices.

Gothic garden pathways should hide the inevitable destination. Encourage your visitors to imagine what is lurking around the path by placing walls, hedges, taller shrubs and understory trees that obscure their view. Hang rustic and decaying signage on squeaky chains that warn of trouble up ahead so that the neighbors query whether it is safe to go alone to borrow sugar? Goth gardening allows you more privacy in sprawling developments and downtown villages by encouraging only the strong and naive friendly neighbor to come calling. Each person brings their own demons to their gothic-themed gardens. The more perverse, the more people may tend to linger on the path and frighten themselves with their own imaginations. At least the fun people do. As a personal friend tells me often: Boo yah!

For more helpful hints on gothic gardening, check out these sites:

http://cfyn.ifas.ufl.edu/theme.html

http://cfyn.ifas.ufl.edu/cemetery.html

http://cfyn.ifas.ufl.edu/myth.html

Source: Buckland, Raymond, Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, Page 49, LLewlellyn Worldwide, 1996

* ass's ear = Comfrey, Symphytum officinale

* bear's foot = Stinking Hellebore, Helleborus foetious

* bull's eyes = Marsh Marigold, Caltha palustiris

* calf's snout = Toadflax, Linaria vulgaris

* dove's foot = Cranesbill, Geranium sylvaticum

* Sidhe (pronounced 'shee') literally means "people of the (fairy) hills". Gaelic for the fairies in both Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.