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Scary Gardening

© Teresa Watkins

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.