is so individual—I love narcissus, but know many people who can’t stand it, and folks wax eloquent about wisteria, the smell of which makes me sick. So, in creating a fragrant garden, let your nose be your guide. Here are some suggestions: jasmine, honeysuckle, sweet autumn clematis, mimosa, hosta, stock, evening primrose, nicotiana, angel’s trumpet (especially the white), moonflower, sweet pea, ginger, lily of the valley, peony, and pinks.
DIY Inspired Idea: The Scent of Happiness
The minute you walk into someone’s home, you can almost immediately tell how happy a household it is. Much of that is determined by the smell. A home with the fragrance of sugar cookies or a freshly baked pumpkin pie is one you may well want to visit often. Similarly, a space redolent of the bouquet of lilies or tea roses is one where the residents take care to make their home beautiful to both the eye and the other senses. There are lots of small things we can do in regard to “energy maintenance” for our home. To sweeten any mood, this recipe works wonders on you or anyone in your environment who might need a lift. Combine the following essential oils in a quart spray bottle filled with water:
•Two drops Neroli
•Four drops bergamot
•Four drops lavender
•Two drops rosemary
Working in the garden gives me something beyond the enjoyment of senses. It gives me a profound feeling of inner peace.
—Ruth Stout
Painterly Primroses
As a young girl, I was particularly taken by a row of primroses my mother had in a border planting. The colors were deep and pure like my favorite crayons—purplish blues, intense red-orange, and buttery yellows. I loved that such beauty came up out of rather commonplace and cabbagey foliage. When Mom showed me how to carefully separate the “babies” from the established adult primroses, I planted my very own, in my favorite mysterious blue, in “my” part of the garden. Mom, who ran a small but busy dairy farm, also showed me her secrets of accelerating plant growth without the blue hormone-filled potions you could buy at the hardware store. (That was cheating in her book.) She would take well-“cured” cow dung and mix it into the soil around her plants. I took her cue, and by the next spring, I had a prim little row of primroses that had all sprung from the baby I had brought home and transplanted. It was at that point that my mom nodded approvingly and I was pronounced to have a green thumb.
One of the daintiest joys of spring is the falling of soft rain among blossoms.
—Mary Webb
A Bed for Your Flowers
I found an old bed in a neighbor’s trash. It was wrought ironwork that was very intricate and just too pretty to be thrown away. I set the footboard and headboard at each end of a row of flowers in one of my gardens. When a passerby asks me why the bed is in the middle of my garden, I reply with, “Haven’t you ever heard of a flower bed?” I now have an herb bed, too. I’m looking for an old crib to set around my seedlings, and that will be my nursery bed.
The first gathering of salads, radishes, and herbs make me feel like a mother about her baby—how could anything so beautiful be mine?
—Alice B. Toklas
Trumpeting Joy with Tulips
I love tulips better than any other spring flower. They are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth they look like wholesome, freshly scrubbed young girls beside stout ladies whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun? I have heard them called bold and flaunting. But to me they seem modest grace itself, only always on the alert to enjoy life as much as they can and unafraid of looking the sun or anything else above them in the face.
To dig one’s own spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?
—Beverly Nichols
Sound Gardening
If you want a more sophisticated sound for your garden than wind chimes normally offer, consider garden bells. They are a set of cup-shaped metal bells on wires that comes with a base. Like chimes, they peal when blown by the breeze. Unlike chimes, however, the tones change when they are filled with rain, and their sound can be adjusted by bending the wires.
Wind Chime Feng Shui: Inviting Good Energy into Your Home
Make a wind chime of “shiny objects” such as old keys, bits of jewelry, and other items from your decluttering. For example, I have a lot of “mateless” earrings which I love even though they are only one of a pair. These chimes abet gathering up the good energy of those unseen that can help protect you and drive away the not-so-helpful energy. Take a stick (a small piece of sea-smoothed driftwood is perfect); tie string around the shiny objects and hang them from the stick where they can tinkle gently in the breeze and make contact with your garden’s guardian angels for you. Hang it in a window in your home or wherever you want to hear the lovely music of your wind chimes.
And all it lends to the sky is this—
A sunbeam giving the air a kiss.
—Harry Kemp, “The Hummingbird”
A Spring Reverie
In the enclosure, the spring flowers are almost too beautiful—a great stretch of foam-like cowslips. As I bend over them, the air is heavy and sweet with their scent, like hay and new milk and the kisses of children, and, further on, a sunlit wonder of chiming daffodils.
Before me are two great rhododendron bushes. Against the dark, broad leaves the blossoms rise, flame-like, tremulous in the still air, and the pear rose loving-cup of a magnolia hands delicately on the gray bough.
May all your weeds be wildflowers.
—Gardening plaque
Put a Wreath on It
Oftentimes, your kitchen is the heart of the home. Something about cooking and sharing food brings people together. An herbal wreath hanging on the kitchen door can be a source of love and luck. You’ll need the following for your creation:
•Freshly cut herbs of your choice
•A wire wreath frame, available from most craft stores
•Either string or florist’s wire, ribbon, and a hot glue gun
This is truly one of the simplest craft projects you can ever make—simply use the wreath frame as a base and use string or the florist’s wire to anchor the fresh herbs into place. Finish it off with a colorful ribbon, or other magical decorative touches you may want to add.
Healing Wreath: The ideal herbs for a wreath that brings curative
