Scary Gardening

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.

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