Cauldron Corner

Moonshadow's Witch Garden

The garden in July 2005

This is our pentagram garden at the front of our house, the photo above was taken at the end of June 2005. It's a little difficult to see the shape of the pentagram from the angle of the photo, but trust me it's there. The garden has matured to be full of the delightful scents of lavender, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm and several other herbs and has definately proved to have been worth all the work. What follows below is a sort of diary of the week it took to make the bare bones that matured into the wonderfully fragrant garden above.

We'd decided to re-vamp our garden and make it a garden that reflects who we are and what we represent ages ago but that's as far as it got, just an idea to turn our front garden into a herb garden for a while. The initial idea was to create a formal parterre. To say it was just an idea isn't strictly true, Si had got as far as sowing some lavender at Ostara 2003 and raising them into little plants that were scattered around the house waiting for somewhere to go. We wanted to have small lavender borders to encase the new garden that much we were certain of.

So we got up on the morning of August 27th 2003 and Si decided to do 'a bit of weeding'. That grew into 'should we plant the willow in the front border'? And blossomed to 'why don't we start the parterre'? After lots of weed pulling we stopped for a cup of tea and had a think about what we wanted to do. We thought about it a little longer and inspiration took the shape of a pentagram full of fragrant herbs that would drift their scent through the windows on warm summer nights. If you want to learn more about Pentagrams and why we chose to base our garden on one then click on the link above.

Si sketched the pic below whilst we had our cup of tea. We decided that we wanted to do everything organically and try different things such as slug deterrents. The garden had been lawn for a large amount of the time, stripping away what passed for a lawn revealed soil badly in need of some vitamins and a serious lack of worms and beneficial creepy crawlies, there was going to be a lot of work ahead of us! So lets go back in time to.........

Late August 2003 - The Plan

Day 1

This is the border at the start of the 'bit of weeding' Si decided to do. Fifteen minutes later the seed of the grand plan to change the whole of the front garden were sown. A plan I suspect Si will later regret <WEG>.

By the end of day 1 we had the pentagram marked out and the willow border in place. And after a short trip to the garden centre a few new plants in situ. Sooty is inspecting the cauldron I'd just finished planting up.

Day 2

The start of day 2 and it was raining, it stopped for a little while so the cat came out to assist. He decided that the centre was where he wanted it to be! When we''d finally sent him off to play with a ball of wool Si got stuck into digging out the star.

End of day 2 and the light was fading but it saw the pentagram dug out and some of the soil replaced with organic compost. Three garden centre trips saw us stocked up with compost, bark chips, 'little witch' narcissus, some new herbs and violas.

Day 3

Day 3 and I told you Si would regret starting this job at some point lol. Up to this point he'd done all the work himself as I'd been working on orders and herb kits.

End of day 3 and we now had 3 mounds of earth instead of 1. Yes good people I did some digging to, I wasn't just leaning on the spade hehe.

Day 4

A better shot of the inner star at the start of day 4. Comments from the neighbours started to arrive, are we digging to Australia. A pond etc.

End of day 4 and the first of the bark segments is completed. We'd also managed to riddle and de-stone half of one of the mounds of soil.

Day 5

Midday on day 5, we'd forgotten to take a piccy at the start but now one of the three mounds has completely gone. Still lots to do but it's getting there. Garden centre trip for more compost and bark and I got a lovely scented rose for the centre.

End of day 5 and would you look at that! It's really taking shape.The plan has changed slightly but the basis is the same. The lavender isn't planted yet, but I couldn't resist seeing what the garden looked like with plants in lol

Day 6 & 7

Si's back to work now so there isn't as much time to work on the garden as there was last week, couple that with visitors and not much got done on day 6. Still we did manage to clear another mound of soil.

Day 7 and phase one of the garden is finished. The pentagram is now in place and planted up. We still have the path around the edge to do and the flower beds to revamp and plant up.

Phase 1 Completed - The garden still needs work but I'm delighted with it so far and in what we've achieved in just a week. Si's worked hard, does he regret the 'bit of weeding'? He says "No, it's a great improvement". James helped to and worked very hard, even Sooty helped dig the odd hole lol. I did my bit, I dug and moved buckets of earth and riddled for Britian. I got the final stage of phase 1 today, and I loved every minute of it. I planted the spring bulbs and some pansies and violas for autumn, the pansies are more to fill it out until the herbs get established.

July 2005 Update - Sadly the willow that we planted as a hedge died a few months after planting, despite feeding and watering. It's been replaced with some lavenders, a buddliea, a small yew and a few evergreen shrubs. Phase two (the path around the end and the middle border) was abandoned for now. Sooty is no longer with us to supervise future developments, that job has passed to Pyewacket who doesn't seem that interested in gardening at all! The garden has come on a lot, when we first planted it I imagined drifts of lavender and thyme and that's exactly what I got. I'll update again when the rose is a little bigger and will try to get a photo from above to show the shape better. So keep checking!