Selected Review
Tired? Depressed? Grey winter doldrums got you down? Check out the Gothic Gardening website. In no time, you will be feeling the need to get in touch with the earth elements and be eyeing that stack of junk-mail gardening catalogues from a completely new perspective.
http://charon.gothic.net/~malice/
Approached from the Goth aesthetic, Alice Day brings a refreshing breath of night air to the cadre of candy coated, pretty pink gardening sites and publications flooding the market at this time of year. The suggested themes and planting lists provide a dark sultry tapestry that not only appeal to the shadowy sensibility but also include a level of depth so that those in any planting zone will find suggestions applicable to their region.
The tongue-in-cheek Le Jardin Sanguinaire provides suggestions for annuals, perennials and ornamentals that go beyond the tired, old blood roses approach. Plant offerings include King's Blood tulips, Blood Berries and Japanese Blood grass giving the gardener a well-rounded listing of plantings for providing color possibilities spring though fall and beyond. Many of the plants listed would also adapt to container gardening, giving the balcony or patio gardener options as well. The author even includes one of my personal favorites, a Blood-Leafed Japanese Maple, which I can say from experience, is quite content to be grown as a container plant.
Other garden themes offer suggestions for The Night Garden night blooming / night fragrant cultivars, The Somber Garden, an all black garden (fun, unique and strikingly different, I recommend trying this one). In Gardening for Bats, Day approaches the topic for all the right reasons insect control. Not only does she list a variety of sweet smelling annuals & perennials to attract insects and delight your senses, she also discusses the different types of bat houses & roosts and provides a link where you may obtain do-it-yourself instructions for building your own.
In Beyond the Thirteen, Day admits that she has become a bit dispassionate with the whole idea of theme gardens yet her mind continues along that vein. Here she adds additional, less developed suggestions for themes (Hummm a Love Slave garden?) and continues her depth of unique planting combinations & possibilities.
The Potpourri and Ye Olde Gothick Herball sections salaciously present a number of juicy, dark aromatic vignettes with enough diversity that all will find something that appeals to them in an endemic fashion. Using a number of number of 16th and 17th century publications as a base (Gerard, Herball, 1597 Culpeper, The Complete Herbal, 1653 - Kynge, The Grete Herball, 1561 among others) Day ambles through herbal folk cultural lore from many different approaches. While her citations are not always the most accurate if taken from the Pagan perspective, she does provide the dark gardener with enough edifying tidbits to warm the cockles of even the darkest of gothic hearts. Of Wormwood not only examines the herb itself, it also provides an encompassing look at its most notorious of distillates: absinthe. Reminding us, If it didn't already exist, goths would have had to invent it., Day delves into both the mystique and ceremony of this libation that is banned though out most of western world. Of Garlic looks at the herb from both the medicinal and pungent natures. Correctly siting it as belong to the goddess Hecate, Day also reminds us of its forbidden status in a number of cultures that find its aromatic nature too offensive.
The Potpourri section examines a collection of different herbcraft undertakings, Moondials, Natural Black Dye: Hair and Clothing, Incense Recipes and others as taken from such publications as Websters Herbs: How to Grow Them and How to Use Them - 1974 and Bremness World of Herbs, -1990. In Vampiric Plants recants the Romney folk legends of vampiric pumpkins (I grew up hearing this one from the Serbian perspective). Day also delves into the Victorian language of flowers from the Gothic sensibility in Just Say "I Hate You" With Flowers. Who wouldn't love sending a bouquet of meadowsweet (uselessness) and horseshoe geraniums (stupidity) to their ex?
In Gothic Plant Tales, Day regales us with plant lore from a publication of a by gone era. Day quotes no less than twenty tales from the Edwardian era, Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911. Skinner's tales, from the copyright free publication, provide snippets of folklore insight into such mysteries as Adultery and Avocados and The Bloody Heath. For those that enjoy his cultural and historical folk tales you may want to peruse his publication Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land available online through Project Gutenberg.
Be warned Day's writing style is rather abrupt, Since you gothy types rarely see the light of day, what good does a garden do you?, and she does get several demerits for the comment saying that vampires do not exist. So if you are looking to be coddled and coaxed into gardening, then you may want to look elsewhere. But hey, isnt that what the gothic sensibility is all about?
Reviewed by LA / nodecaf