Inviting the Fey into Your Garden

by L. Lisa Harris

I sit among the apple trees feeling the last rays of the setting sun warm my face, enjoying the sweet scent of their blossoms. Birds are singing, squirrels are chattering, and a doe stands in the woods, eying my raspberry bushes. I feel a warm, tingly buzz all around me, when a movement off to my side catches my attention. I look towards the woods and see fern fronds dancing in the breeze. The interesting thing is that there is no breeze.

As I gaze around my tiny backyard, perched on the edge of a suburban greenbelt, I feel a sense of accomplishment. After three years of digging, planting and leaving offerings to the fey, I have a magickal garden. My garden is not just a place to grow food, flowers and a nice lawn. It's a place to meditate, to sing and to connect to the power of the earth and the fey.

When we bought this house three years ago, I was not thrilled with the prospect of living on a postage stamp-sized lot in the middle of the suburbs. Unfortunately, if I wanted my daughter to go to the best schools, giving up my standard of a more rural lifestyle was exactly what I had to do for the time being. After much debate and discord, we bought the house and I set about making it and the yard so magickal that I wouldn't even realize that I was subject to the Nazilike control of a homeowners association, or that my neighbors were way too close for comfort.

I learned quickly that having a "wilderness" is not about a large lot (or even a yard if you live in an apartment), or living far away from your closest neighbors. It's about energy. I've been in large, perfectly manicured yards that looked like something right out of Martha Stewart's magazine and that were big and beautiful but had a sterile feel. By the time every weed is eradicated, every imported tree and shrub is trained and pruned into submission, and every insect is destroyed with toxic poison, there's not a lot of energy left.

On the other hand, I've been on apartment balconies in the middle of the city where the fey danced in hanging baskets of fuchsias and geraniums, or in a small bag of potting soil cut open and planted with salad greens. I knew that I wanted my yard to be different than the "showcases" around me. I knew that I wanted the fey to dance in my yard.

The first step to creating a magickal garden is being mindful. Mindfulness is often considered to be a Buddhist quality, but it is something that we rates. I love to use my Douglas fir and giant sequoia trees to teach students how to feel plant energies, because they are so different. The fir trees have a sharp buzzing energy, and the sequoias have a soft warm energy; both are pleasing to me in different ways. Find plants that have strong, healthy energy that feels good to you. Even if you never see a faery, you'll have a yard full of great energy.

Performing meditation, ritual and song dedicated to the fey is a great next step in getting their attention. I began doing small, private rituals in the backyard, and soon had Enchanters of the Woods Pagan Chorus practicing songs and invocations there twice a month, much to the chagrin of my adolescent daughter, who just wants to fit in and have a normal family like the rest of the yuppies on our block. (The poor kid has a witch for a mother and a Deadhead for a father; she's never to going to completely achieve the appearance of a "normal" family, especially when Mom and 15 of her closest friends are singing, dancing and drumming in the backyard.) Practicing a musical instrument and hanging wind chimes are also effective methods of attracting the fey.

You may find that you already have fey living in your yard or home; they may appear in a form that you do not immediately recognize. They often appear to us as animals, which is a form that most adult humans can understand and deal with. The principal resident fey in our home is of course, Bad Kitty. There is something otherworldly about her that goes beyond her abilities as a familiar. Sometimes when she looks at you, you can just tell. It's difficult to explain, but if you've ever had a cat that obviously wasn't "just a cat," then you know what I'm talking about. Even if your kitty is an actual feline and nothing more, cats don't have the barriers of diminished senses and social conditioning that most humans do and are very receptive to the fey. Bad Kitty can see the house faeries and often plays with them. Sometimes they play with her, much to their amusement and ours. Often, you will notice that birds, squirrels or other creatures that come to your magickal garden will have unusual qualities, so don't think that because you don't see Tinkerbell in your yard that the faeries aren't there.

After attracting the fey, the next step is to dedicate an area exclusively to them and the local wildlife. Given the choice of a perfectly manicured lawn and orderly rows of exotic shrubs or an area that is more natural, they'll take the wild area. Creating a small wilderness is not difficult. It can be as simple as hanging up a bird feeder, or if your space is limited a hanging basket containing a native plant, or allowing local flora to take over a small area of the yard if you're lucky enough to have dirt. It can be as complicated as undertaking a reforestation project. Given my Type A personality and ranger background, I chose the latter. I cruised the local nurseries for Douglas fir and cedar trees to fill in the gaps in the greenbelt behind the house. I planted native berry species and ferns across old social trails to encourage the neighborhood wannabe thugs to go smoke behind someone else's house, and I tossed out handfuls of native wildflower seeds. Soon, native plants took hold in previously trampled or deforested areas.

One day last summer, some loud, rowdy teenage boys were tearing up the woods and kicking a football almost directly behind our house. I watched them carefully, hoping that they would stay away from the area that I had so carefully replanted and protected, but knowing that since the woods were association property, there was not a thing I could do unless they crossed onto our property line. One of their kicks suddenly shot way to the left, much to everyone's surprise, the ball disappeared into a large blackberry bramble. They tried their best to find it, trampling more plants and breaking more branches in the process, only to have the ones who had caused the most damage to the plants emerge cut up and bloody. The ball has never been found, and they play in the park now. I am convinced that the fey took their ball to stop the wanton destruction of their home.

Last fall, I heard my daughter in the other room shouting, "Mom! There's a deer eating your trees." I walked to the window and saw a young doe nibbling at the raspberry and cherry leaves in the backyard. The neighbors had told me that deer had once frequented the area but that with the increased construction and population in our subdivision they had retreated farther into the hills and hadn't been seen for several years. I quietly sneaked around the side of the house to take her picture. She looked at me with her large, liquid brown eyes, unblinking and without fear. When she had eaten her fill, she gracefully leaped the berry canes and slowly walked back into the woods. I walked out to the yard to survey the damage. Some chewed-up trees and vines were a small price to pay for what I considered a great success in habitat restoration work. I found that she had not damaged any of the plants but had merely nibbled off the fleshy parts of the leaves that were due to fall off in another few days anyway. As I stood there, looking into the woods thinking of the Celtic deer goddess Flidais, I could have sworn that I heard someone or something say, "Thank you."

Whether you hope to see faeries, attract wildlife, feel the energy of the plant and nature spirits or just create a space with great energy, you can't go wrong by welcoming the fey into your garden.