Customer Reviews

Magical Gardens: Myths, Mulch and Marigolds

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This is a book about beauty. I have had gardens since I was a child. They have been pretty and abundant and raggedy and weedy, but they all had one thing in common-they were places of retreat, prayer, and satisfied creativity. Magical Gardens is a delightful book, full of soulful understanding of magic and mediation, lightened with sly humor (Chapter 4 is "A Course in Marigolds"), and plans for luscious gardens Martha Stewart never imagined. This is a book to treasure for its wisdom and practical ideas. It's also a great gift for any gardener, whether they are exploring magic or not, because every garden is a place of miracles. It's a worthy gift to someone already exploring magic, because it illustrates the principle of creative change of the world around you in such a beautiful and easily understood way. What's best is I can offer this book to anyone as an explanation of my belief in magic. Gardens teach us how to pray, I can tell them, here, see for yourself how beautiful a prayer can be when it is full of flowers and birds. I'd like to see Patricia Monaghan do another magical garden book on the simple veggie garden. We face the challenges of chemical poisoning, genetically modified "Frankenfoods" like the GM corn that poisons butterflies, and massive soil loss inflicted by corporate agri-business. A veggie garden could be a radical act of magical resistance to the destruction of our environment.

Having always been interested in the myths, medicinal qualities and other properties associated with plants and herbs, I picked up this book hoping it might show me how to make my garden a place of ritual and magick. Not only has it done that, but it shows one how to go through the seasons while still maintaining the garden as a sacred space physically, spiritually and mentally. The various harvest stories and the activities contained within the book flow together nicely to introduce one to the true miracle of all growing things.

I was really disappointed in this book because I have enjoyed her other books so much and I have been a gardener since birth. You would be better off buying Patricia Telesco's "Gardening with the Goddess". Ms. Monaghan instead of using her imagination for the plants in the various gardens uses the named cultivars and not the attributes of the plants. Such as buying the "Fairy tm" rose and not using plants that attract faery energies such as columbine. abutilon, primrose etc. Using trademarked plants is a big cop out.

I was SO excited when I bought the book online. Then I got it, and I was sorely disappointed. The beginning text is very cold and, I thought, a bit combative. As for the garden plans... I was looking for MAGICAL gardens, not gardens with magical names. I don't feel that the plant selections were made with any thought whatsoever. How easy is it to search online for plants with "fairy," "angel," or "witch" in the name? It takes more than that to make a garden magic!