Illustration © Liam Lefr
I began letter-writing in August or September, when the final stage of Facetime fatigue set in and the little summer freedom we were permitted left me aching for distant friends more than ever. Messages and voice-calls asking if loved ones were “doing okay?” and “Can I do anything to help?” turned into decorated envelopes, homemade wax seals, laboured-over letters filled with whatever stories I could scrape up—stories from my walks, stories from the Vikings, stories about the weather, prophesied soothsayings on the adventures we’d get up to when we could see each other again. I really recommend writing letters, if you have been gifted the luxury of time. In my most recent letter, I pulled some sweet-pea seeds from the bottom of a drawer, sealing the letter with the paraphrase—“to plant a garden is to have faith in tomorrow.” Here is a garden story for you.
I have always been an Imbolc witch. I feel a slight buzzing excitement leading up to Samhain, enjoy the solstices as anyone would, look forward to Beltane for the honey bread—but that first day of February has always filled me with a fire. It starts with the memory of flowers. The ritual begins, always too early - the materials are collected.
Thompson & Morgan’s seed catalogue.
Sarah Raven’s flower book.
Chiltern Seeds, for herbs.
A quick layout sketch of the garden, entirely not to any measurable scale.
The deteriorating cardboard box of last summer’s gathered seeds, MUST be unlabelled.
One must arrange them in a circle when the first inch of golden winter sun shows his face and the Snowdrop spears spike from the soil, brew a cup of tea, and plan the garden.
To create a garden is to cast three spells: one, a divination—a steady future, as safe and hardy as today. Two, alchemy in a larger cauldron—everything just right, a fertile soil, heat, and light. Three, a dedication to death.
A Divination
The path of life is Corkscrew willow, forming knots and spreading out, twisting back in on itself, casting energy in a hundred different directions. Last year put hard breaks on life, splitting the trunk, forcing a forked cross, a y-shaped stick. I lost many things, but I now have a garden. Up until this point, to look six months into the future has been to scry into a black lake —to purchase seeds for a biennial flower, one that will take a year to mature, would be futile; I barely knew the direction I was headed in the next week, let alone the next year. I had taken a vow of instability and impermanence in exchange for career progression and measurable success. The first sacrifice of gardening is the compulsory growing of roots. You can’t entertain the idea of a garden without standing still for at least one cycle of the seasons—it is creation, a birth after six months' wait, an unspoken obligation of care. I used to always picture old witches, powerful beyond my imagination, with strings of beads about their necks and citrine between their breasts looking to the sky and telling the future— when will it rain? When will summer come? When will things get better? Ask a gardener. They can see the year ahead.
The Alchemist
If anyone need be blamed for my witchery, it is my parents—for teaching me to garden. Go outside and sink both hands deep, gloveless, into some wet squirming soil, and tell me this isn’t witchcraft. The chemistry is simple magic, second-hand, learnt and forgotten—bowls of coffee grounds in the corner, comfrey teas that stink, ground-up eggshells by the boxful, olive oil in the water butt, uncareful measurements of brown versus green in the compost. Even the depths of winter is ripe time for some of the most joyful garden alchemy. The second sacrifice of gardening is clean hands. Testing the soil—gather a portion in your hand on a dry day, spread it between your thumb and forefinger. Can it be shaped, and how far? Does it crumble apart, is there grit, is it smooth? Let this inform your divination, and plant accordingly. Harvest a soil jar, add water, and a dessert-spoon of baking soda. Does it fizzle and bubble? Perhaps stay away from that honeysuckle.
It was following the cycles of the years, spending winters snapping dead sunflower-stems for bean poles and going out in cold, dark, wet nights to pour menstrual blood on the compost heap, early springs scraping spider-eggs out of plant pot stacks with my fingernails, and summers sweating over mercilessly weeding beds, both hands around the neck of a burdock root pulling like King Arthur, that led me to fall into witchcraft like a stone into water.
A Dedication
Commitment, of whatever kind, involves a prophecy of an end—an expectation of decomposition, a recognition that day does not come without night. You have cast your runes, planned a garden, stirred your cauldron until it bubbles just right, frothing with earthworms dancing up for rain and cabbage white maggots ready to eat your greens. And yet witch-work is never done, your plants will always be thirsty, and as surely as midsummer will come, the days will get shorter. The final sacrifice of gardening is the knowledge that death will always collect. As surely as flowers bloom, they will die. There’s no card without a reverse—gardening has always been a labour that crumbles in the hand. If you want to dedicate yourself to this sweetest of magic, you will have to slice the limbs off the ancient apple tree, you will have to pull that diseased crop and all its neighbors out by the roots, leaves must be ripped off the stem, roses must be pruned back to a stump, snails must be sizzled with salt, seeds will rot in their soil and fail to thrive.
Once you have offered this blood, Winter will come again, with its dreams of flowers. But when this year goes to seed you can gather the stones and take them into next year. Or give them to friends, and curse them with the sweetest magic. A y-shaped stick, a fork in the road, can always be turned in the hand.
Rose London is a poet, folklorist and gardener from Kent. She graduated from The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2020, and now lives in Yorkshire, where she studies Horticulture and Medicinal Herbalism, and spends her time pulling chickweed clumps out of roadsides for lunch. This is a response to the Scrying theme.