Gardening with the Goddess: Creating Gardens of Spirit and Magick

I was looking for a book that would give me guidelines on what plants honor which goddess. It also includes using stones, crystals and statuary that represent the different goddesses. What I found exceptionally helpful was the planting guide for the moon and astrological phases. Too many times I have planted things that should have grown well, but didn't. Since I have been planting by phases I have had tremendous success. I am very pleased with this book.

A friend brought this book to my attention and I'm so glad I bought it! In the first part of ther book (55 pgs), we're introduced to all sorts of neat things like companion planting (e.g cucumbers with chamomile, marigold with tomatoes etc), gardening with the seasons (working with nature rather than at odds with her), gardening by moon signs (e.g moon in aries, plant garlic & onions), crystals and gardening, and plant meanings. The rest of the book is dedicated to specific godess gardens - for each of these gardens, a goddess is described and then there are writings about the plants, crystals, stones, colors, decorative touches, directions, and adaptations. Each section has a great activity/celebration of the garden to perform as well. Its quite a wonderful book - poetic in many ways, and just plain fun. The only thing that I think is missing is a discussion of the use of native plants rather than non-natives in our gardens. Its so important and is SO integral to the whole web of life. I would have loved to have seen that discussion in the up front section on gardening with the seasons since, just like we shouldn't plant against the flow of the seasons we shouldn't plant plants that disrupt it either. The book that opened my eyes to all that was Planting Noah's Garden.

Patricia Telesco's Gardening With The Goddess: Creating Gardens Of Spirit And Magic is an informative and practical work combining the pastime of gardening with a spiritual reverence for goddesses, from Amaterasu to Gaia to White Buffalo Woman. The first section consists of primary advice and suggestions for adding the new age spirituality into one's gardening work. The second section is devoted to dozens of goddesses worshipped through human history and how to tailor a garden to the aspects of each one. A thoughtful and well-presented book of new age spirituality in practice, Gardening With The Goddess is an unusual and enthusiastically recommended addition to gardening and metaphsycial studies reading lists and reference collections.

Patricia Telesco has a way of making home magic simple yet profound. In this book she lays out a variety of ideas for magical gardens that are guaranteed to make you eager to start digging in the earth! Be aware, however, that this is not a how-to gardening manual, nor does it contain illustrated garden plans. There are plenty of other books out there for that. Instead, this little book is a compendium of magical lists--lists of plants for various goddesss gardens (I'm planning a garden to Bast right now, specifically for my cats to lounge in), correspondences, crystals for gardening, and other magical ideas. Enjoy!

In the springtime of year we are all busy with our little or big gardens. Some of us have vegetable gardens, some of us have herb gardens. Some of us have a sacred little patch of grass growing in our backyard in the middle of a large city somewhere, and its our only connection to the earth in a concrete world.In her book "Gardening with the Goddess" Patricia Telesco offers us a new way to look at our garden, a new focus for how we decorate and plant up our little spaces of serenity.The first part of her book offers the basics in gardening and setting up or cleaning up your garden and offering the correspondences of particular plants and herbs. There are suggestions for small rituals for land blessing, planting (blessing of the seeds) and gardening by moon cycles. She also suggests crystal companion planting. The second part of her book, the Goddess Gardens, is most intriguing. Here she discusses putting together a garden that honors your Goddess by planting those herbs and flowers and trees that are associated with a particular Goddess and by decorating with articles that represent your chosen Goddess. She starts each garden with a "Histo-Cultural Information" section about the Goddess to be honored in each particular garden, and then suggests plants, patterns, stones, colors, decorative touches, direction (north, south, east or west) associated with the Goddess and possible adaptations for indoor gardens, small spaces, allergies etc. She also has suggestions for what to do with the items you have planted, such as drying flower heads or using the fruits or flowers in your kitchen. This is a lovely idea for focusing your garden if you have not yet considered this, and the book itself is a wonderful contemplation of each Goddess she mentions (41 in all) and covers many different paths within the Pagan belief system, so there is bound to be a Goddess for just about any path in this book.