Elemental Gardening 401- Air and Fire

This topic will show the work that I am doing as a student for this class. It’s from the Dept. of Wortcunning, taught by Prof. Barrette. It’s one of three gardening classes I’m working on right now.

Here’s the class description:

Each plant has a magical resonance associating it with a particular Element. An Elemental garden presents a collection of plants all relating to the same Element, along with decorations that support the theme. In this Class, you will learn about Air gardens and Fire gardens. Expect this to take 2-3 months. You need a bit of outdoor space to grow one modest-sized garden (you may choose which Element to cultivate), suitable gardening tools, and a camera (digital, or film and a scanner) to take snapshots.

For this class, I've already begun a "fire garden" for the back, south-facing deck. I started near the end of June; here are some photos tracking my progress.

This picture shows the empty corner on my deck. My plan was to fill it with plants that both referenced the fire element (heat, passion, etc.) and also could withstand the fire-like heat of this deck, which generally runs about 20 degrees hotter than the outside temperature. I also wanted to make the deck a pleasant place to sit in the evenings. Note the pot with a winter-damaged azalea (half of it was killed by our severe cold snap in February) and a volunteer sunflower.

This pot once held a nice kitchen garden; all that was left when I started was an overgrown, woody rosemary plant, some dead stems, and weeds. It was in a great pot, though. My plan was to dig out the old roots, add fresh soil, trim back the rosemary, and plant new herbs.


Here’s my potting bench, loaded down with herbs and dirt, ready to plant the kitchen garden.

Here’s the pot with the roots all dug out and rosemary whacked back and fresh soil and food worked in.

As of July 8, this was the newly-planted kitchen garden. The rosemary was trimmed way back, and I added small basil, parsley, thyme, and sage starts.

Here is the same pot on July 31. You can see how the herbs have taken off! In fact, I’ve already cut back the basil and parsley twice. My kitchen is 10 feet away, and I use these herbs in my everyday cooking. I’ve even made a batch of pesto. Here’s my favorite pesto recipe:

Moonwriter's Pesto

In a food processor, combine until finely chopped:
2 T. pine nuts
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 1/4 C. loosely packed fresh basil leaves
4 ounces grated Parmesan-Regianno cheese

Drizzle in 1/2 C. high-quality olive oil in a show stream. Blend until smooth. The pesto should be a very soft, amost fluid solid-- add a bit more oil if needed.

Season with sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper, and serve over hot pasta. Pass additional cheese.

(This recipe makes enough to serve 4-6 people. It also freezes beautifully!)

And here's the pot on August 12:


Back when I started this project, I went to my favorite local nursery and bought a few plants (names to be supplied later), then brought them up to the deck where they could hang out in their little nursery pots and acclimatize to the artificial climate. I let them sit like this for about a week before potting them up. In the meantime, I made a kind of arrangement out of them, so they’d at least look pretty. This is how they looked in their rough, pre-potted state:

Note the sun plaque hanging on the deck—I found it under the potting bench—had forgotten about it. A perfect addition to a fire garden!

This shows the results of transplanting the nursery-pack flowers mix-and-match fashion into various pots on July 2. All of the pots were those I had sitting around—I couldn’t afford new ones. The tiny pot in the foreground holds a tree seedling that I found growing as a volunteer in a cast-aside pot. I have a great soft spot for the tenacity of plant volunteers, so I carefully moved it into its own pot with fresh new potting soil. 'Might be able to make a bonsai out of it.

The pink petunia in the right foreground was a survivor from last year. It somehow managed to overwinter through our Artic February, and looked pretty scraggly. But I trimmed it back and I think it will come out all right.



At right is a special flower that I bought at our Farmer’s Market specifically for the fire garden. Its flowers reminded me of flames. Details to follow.


The same day that I planted the pots, I was looking at them from my kitchen window and saw a brilliant green Anna’s hummingbird flitting from flower to flower! An unexpected gift. I took this “hummer view” (above) of what the flowers must have looked like to the tiny bird.

Over the next few weeks, I allowed the pots to acclimate, giving them lots of water and regular doses of liquid plant food. Note also that this included helping them through two intensely hot periods, with several days of 100 (or higher) temps--which meant it was pushing 120 degrees on the deck! Above is a picture taken today (July 31), showing how much the pots have filled out.


Below is my Meyer lemon tree, which I’ve had for a few years. You can see four lemons in the center of the image. I pruned it back about a month ago; now its sending out new growth and new blossoms-- more lemons!



On July 28, I went to Lowes and spent $20 on a three-tiered plant stand I’d seen there a couple of weeks ago. I figured it would help add some vertical “lift” to the garden and would help me display the plants to their best advantage. I also bought a potted sunflower and some wine-red snapdragons, all of which were on sale. There isn’t anything sunnier or summerier than a sunflower, si? Ditto for snapdragons, which would also add fiery spikes to the display.

Today—July 31—I decided to “assemble” the garden. It took me about an hour to arrange everything, and I’m very pleased with how it worked out. The garden is in a sort of open triangle—very flame-like. In fact, it makes a triangle that, with the help of the plant stand, points up, which mimics the elemental symbol for fire (right). The triangle also evokes the trinity of womanly magick (maiden-mother-crone) which makes me happy.


Below is a close-up of the bottom tier of the plant stand, with a cactus, blood sorrel (tasty in salads!), and a fertility statue that a Pagan friend gave me from a trip to central America. With three kids, I’ve been fertile enough, thanks, but fertility and sex and passion seem like good things to include in a fire garden.


Here’s the middle tier. Front and center is the little volunteer tree—I think it’s a pine. Back, l-r: cyclamen, a cactus, and a plam.


Top tier: A small red hybrid petunia and a wine-red snapdragon, with a small bee skep alongside. (Bees are fiery, right?) Sitting at the very top is the potted sunflower I bought at Lowes. I liked the idea of having the SUNflower at the peak of the display. Like the sun. You know, the sun? Oh, never mind. I used twine to tie it to the deck post so that it couldn’t fall off.


All of the pots either have self-watering trays or are sitting in their own little trays. This helps conserve water in the high temperatures of the deck. In the plant stand, it also keep water from dripping onto the cactuses from the upper tier plants. Many of these plants--the lemon, the sorrel, the cacti, the rosemary, the azalea--are perennials, but even these plants need extra water in the extremely hot environment of my back deck. The annuals are even more fragile. Xeriscaping, a technique I use in my yard, doesn't hold up well on the desk.

By the way--I learned something new: the xeriscaping movement has its own logo (left). Actually, the logo and the word "xeriscaping" are registered trademarks of the Denver Water, the City of Denver's Water Department! Who'd guess?

Below is the left-arm grouping. I still need to repot the yellow mum in the left foreground. Also, in the round pot is a wildflower mix that came from a Tori Amos CD, i.e., "Beekeeper mix." The white rock in the foreground is a piece of quartz from Death Valley National Park-- my mom picked it up a few years ago when she was there. (Which you're not supposed to do, but it's pretty cool to have a chunk of Death Valley in your fire garden!)

Here's the right-arm grouping. Details on the component plants later. Note the metal-and-glass butterfly "sculpture" in the upper left, also shown here at right.


I also installed some lights: two sets of Japanese lantern-style balls and one set of white icicle lights that I dug out of the Yule boxes. (Note that we have installed posts on the deck corners, for installing lights, flags, wind chimes, etc.)


Here’s a shot of the lights at night, hanging over the garden.


The whole experiment has been really interesting. I'm a gardener from way back, but I don't usually devote myself to an intensely-themed project like this. The act of planting a Fire Garden, and of thinking about the correspondences in every aspect of planning has taught me a lot. I'm already enjoying sitting out gazing at this garden, watching it grow and change. Pretty cool. (pun intended!)

August 2, 2006: The garden on Lughnasadh....


The garden on August 12 (the astilbe are pumping out flowers, and the salvia-- after I cut them back-- are preparing to set a new set of blooms!):


And an August 12 close-up of some of the blossoms on my lemon:


And, the symbol of my fire garden--the sunflower. (The vivid, blood-red snapdragons just below it aren't so bad, either!)


The garden on August 19, below (two images). Everything is thriving. The salvia, which I cut back about three weeks ago and didn't know if they'd rebloom, are sending forth new bloom--about three times the bloom they had in the first place!



Here's my view of the garden through my kitchen window:


Here's the garden on August 26, exploding in bloom:

I've learned a lot about pruning. All of these flowers have responded to careful pruning by putting out even more blossoms. Notice in the August 26 shots how the salvia have returned! they're sending out brilliant red spikes of flowers--very fiery!

Notice anything new? At the crux of the "V" is a small fountain!

Bill and I were installing a different water feature in the side yard, and found ourselves with an extra pump and now use for it. I thought it would be lovely to add a small water feature to my fire garden-- not onyl for aesthetics but to sort of balance the heat off the fire. We went to Lowes and Bill bought me a beautiful red ceramic pot, to blend in with the fire garden. At home, we added a clay flowerpot (set upside down over the pump, on the bottom of the red clay pot) and some river rocks, and voila! At left is a closer view. August 31, 2006. The last day of August seems a fitting date to bring my comments about this garden to their formal end.

What fun it's been! The garden attracts wildlife. Hummingbirds visit the garden throughout the day, and goldfinches drop by to check out the "readiness" of the ripening sunflower heads. Honey- and mason bees bumble and buzz along the garden blossoms and those of the nearby star jasmine (on the opposite side of the deck). I've seen butterflies visiting, too, and now that we have the fountain, wasps stop on its edge to sip water.

Below is a picture of the garden on a sunny afternoon--lush and exuberant! The salvia have returned, and everything else is thriving.


I haven't lost any plants, and have--in fact--had to repeatedly cut them back so that they wouldn't take over the deck. Of course, pruning has its own rewards: bushier plants, vases of flowers, and herbs to add to the evening meal.

I am finding that I love to sit out and gaze upon this little garden. It's become a lovely oasis, a place to have my morning coffee, or meditate, or write, or just do nothing. The water has added another lovely dimension. The plants are a growing manifestation of Earth. And to bring in "air" in a conscious way, I added a small wind bell chime to the roof's edge.

I am grateful for Professor Barrette writing and teaching this class, because I don't think I would have put the garden together to this extent without the motivation of the class. I plan for it to be a permanent summer fixture!