Gardening with the Fae and Nature Spirits

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to me to live a Spirit-led life. I define the term Spirit here to include God, Goddess, Source and my team of ethereal guides and helpers as well as the Fae (Faeries and their kin) and nature spirits.  When I am consciously engaging with Spirit on a daily or even sometimes an hourly basis depending on what I’m working on, we are in partnership.  

But I have to be conscious of that connection. I have to remember it, be mindful of it and make it a priority. It is a re-training out of a human-centric way of thinking into a kinship way of thinking.  And when it comes to working with fae, it also helps to get me out of my serious state of mind and into a more playful and child-like point of view.

One thing that has been helping me do this better is gardening. I’ve always loved plants and gardening. When I lived in Arizona I did my best to grow what I could in my backyard containers and an old sailboat I filled with so many bags of planting mix and compost. Tomatoes and summer squash did alright there but it was a struggle to grow other plants in the hot desert climate. When I got to western Oregon and saw the rich dark soil and the rain-soaked lush green plantscape, I wanted to kneel on the ground and put my hands in that beauty.

But what worked best for us when we got here was to settle temporarily into an apartment.  We were in a new place we had never been before and I wanted to be flexible. I needed to be able to shift quickly if my daughter’s high school didn’t work out well for her or if I couldn’t find a job right away, and the house rental prices came as quite a shock compared to those in Arizona.

So I filled our apartment balconies with plants I brought with me from Arizona and got new ones that would never have lived in desert climates like ferns, fuschias and begonias.  Later as I began to work with the fae and nature spirits in this small space, it eased me into a focused partnership. I connected with the plant spirits to make flower essences and tinctures. I connected with fae who helped tend my space, then broadened out to other fae who tended the larger areas around me. I had local teachers like herbalist Lawrence Birch who taught me about wildcrafting, and connected me with local gardeners who had different medicinal herbs and gardens that I could visit to see how they do things. I also began working with the Peralandra method of gardening with nature spirits. 

This all opened my senses and consciousness to take the fae into consideration and consultation in all yard and garden plans, especially now that we are in a place with a yard. This starts daily with me going outside and saying good morning to all the fae, the plants, the trees, birds, beings, elementals. This greeting sounds simple, but I think it’s an important step in creating friendly relationships, just like with any neighbor or friend.

If I am working in the garden beds I try to always remember to open up a coning (I learned this in the Perelandra Garden workbook) and include the Deva of Gardening and the Devas of the yard and land, Pan, the appropriate members of the Illuminated Ones, and my Higher Self. A coning in its simplest definition is a vortex of energy that includes nature and humans in partnership as they do a specific activity or work.  Then I can ask questions about where plants want to be planted, if they need food today and just how they are doing generally. I also give warning to the grass, clover and other plants that might overrun the planting spaces before I weed them out of the soil. I respect them and want to give them a chance to shift their energy before I pull them.

And we have been cutting the grass with the lawnmower every so often, which happily still leaves lots of ground cover flowers and dandelions for the bees. Before we do that I give a big shout out to the fae and the plant spirits about the lawnmower coming soon and this is their chance to get out of the way. If the next door neighbors hear me say this, I bet they are quite amused, but if I were fae, I would sure appreciate the heads up!

Our herb garden in progress