Gardening is quite often a lesson in discernment. I have to temper my desire to grow “all the things” with the realization and acceptance that not all things will grow here. That has become a metaphor I’ve had to work with the whole time I’ve lived in lower Alabama. Some things simply do not take root in places where the climate is unsupportive. It is a tough lesson, especially for a creative soul who needs color, variety, and zest. Limitation and restriction have been recurrent themes in this place, forcing me to narrow my focus in almost every aspect of my life. As without, so within.
This region is Zone 8 in terms of hardiness, but the subdivision I live in was built on what was once a cow pasture. There is very little shade, which means everything I plant must be extremely sun-loving. In the height of summer, the storms, heat, and humidity feel like a rain forest. By early autumn, it is scorched and dry like a prairie. Plants have to be hardy enough to endure excessive rain from hurricanes followed by a month or more of drought. The soil is a mix of red clay and sand that washes away continually on its path to the Gulf of Mexico. It gathers in the street, building up sandbanks along the curb.
This land rewards and punishes unexpectedly. It raises an eyebrow at my big plans and the stacks of flower seeds that my husband has bought and hoarded away like a pirate with his treasure. Sometimes I think we garden mostly in our dreams. We visualize the flowers we wish we could grow in a place we have yet to manifest while we work within the limits of where we are now.
When I think of what this coastal plain once was—acres of long-leaf pine and wiregrass, the territory of the Muscogee Nation—I mourn what it has become. Colonists obliterated forests to make way for farms that grow cotton, peanuts, and cattle, forever altering the ecology. Except for the few areas still protected by the government, this land will never be pristine as it was before colonization. It is stripped and cut into squares, the red fields resembling open wounds.
The practice of druidry taught me to listen to the land, to learn from it, and to work with it as it exists. Doing that in this place has felt like sitting with a woman who has endured a great deal of abuse. Many times, I have sat cross-legged on the ground, opening myself up to whatever the land wished to show or tell me, much like holding space for a woman to speak her deepest truth. Gardening is also the sacred work of the soul.
In the beginning, the images I received were not of land at all, but of sea. She would rewind back that far to show me when she felt most at peace. Gradually, she would show me vast forests where animals roamed freely, but never people. It seemed too painful, perhaps for us both. I cannot heal what was done long before I arrived, but I do what I can to comfort, tend, and listen.
She has taught me which plants can withstand the challenging conditions of my back yard, mostly hardy prairie varieties that help the pollinators. The butterflies and bees love the echinacea, bee balm, hyssop, sage, roses, black-eyed susans, and yarrow that consistently beat the odds. When I considered what these plants mean in a spiritual sense, the answers were like a guidebook of what I’ve had to learn and integrate since 2017:
Bee Balm: vibrance, empowerment
Black-eyed Susan: motivation, endurance, justice
Echinacea: boundaries, resistance, resilience
Hyssop: purification, healing
Rose: union of feminine and masculine energies
Russian Sage: expansiveness, self-worth
Yarrow: psychic protection, transmutation
This land, despite its painful history and complexities, has indeed guided me back to the sacred ground of my soul, and for that I will always be grateful.
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