Faeries In Your Garden

(The following is from the forthcoming collection "Thyme for Herbs" by Corinne Hemstreet)

“Faeries in your Garden”

This was the weekend for the Faerie Festival at The Village Herb Shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Although I was sad to miss it - the cup of Fairy Thyme Tea which follows, the Fairy Dust to take home and sprinkle over my Fairy Garden - I’ll make do with my own Fairy Festival here, with plants loved by the Fairies. A Faerie Festival is a celebration of the leafing and flowering of the garden.

Fairy Thyme Tea can be made with black tea, sprigs of thyme, and a piece or two of mint leaves. Fairy Dust can be made with any and all dried petals and leaves of flowers and herbs, but it can also be made with special ones, chosen for their meanings: rose petals for beauty, thyme for activity, rosemary for loyalty, lemon verbena for enchantment, lavender for luck, coriander for closeness, and globe amaranth for immortality. Mix well with a small amount of gold glitter and its ready to work it’s magic.

There are three times, legends tell us, when humans are most likely to see the Faeries: May Eve, Midsummer Night’s Eve and All Hallow’s Eve. To see the Faeries, it is recommended that one find an elm tree and hide close to its trunk. Faeries won’t come around if they see you: Faeries are very private people. But the best way to see a Faerie is to build a Fairy Garden; a Fairy Garden can be in a big wide plant pot, a grassy knoll, roots of trees, or a mossy spot in the garden or woods (for Faeries love moss). Build one, and you may be rewarded by fairy visits. But take note: if you do happen to see a Fairy, you must not stare. Look quickly away and leave as quietly as you can. This is fairy etiquette. (Faeries, by the by, do not like to be called ‘fairies’ but prefer ‘the gentry’ or ‘the little folk’.)

Here are a few of my favorite herbs and flowers for a Fairy garden:

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is the Fairies favorite. They love the color, especially ‘mother-of-thyme,’ fragrance and habit of growth. It is used as a resting place, for dancing, and as a soft, green bed for Fairy babies.

Ferns planted near or in the fairy garden provide the privacy the Faeries like.

Heartsease (johnny- jump- up or Cupid’s flower, the original pansy), can be important in a fairy garden. In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Cupid’s flower was used by the Fairies as a magic love potion.

Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) is always associated with Fairies.

Tulips are used as Fairy cradles.

Narcissus is the flower of the water Fairies in China.

Blue flax (Linum perrene ), which Fairies use to spin and weave their own fine linens.

Monkshood (aconite or wolfbane) is a poisonous plant whose helmet-like flowers are used as fairy helmets worn by fairy guards and knights.

Mallows and Hollyhocks whose round seed cases are called “fairy cheeses”.

Rosemary (rosmaranius) under which the Scilian Fairies are known to make their homes.

St. Johnswort (hypericum), it is said, turns at dusk into a dainty horse which may be ridden in a Fairy parade.

Cowslips (primula veris) are favorites of the Fairies and the lovely yellow primroses of April and May may be golden fairy cups.

Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) provides the sweetly scented bell ringing when Fairies sing.

Midsummer Night’s Eve, which falls between June 21st and 24th is, according to Shakespeare, a night of high fairy mischief and magic. People living in Shakespeare’s time protected their property from celebrating Fairies racing through by decorating doors and gateways with fennel and mugwort, herbs powerful enough to keep the Fairies at bay. At midnight, it’s said, the Fairy king and his court parade through the countryside on their dainty horses. A human should stand near the protective trunk of an elder tree to watch.

Did you see them? Even though you didn’t (Fairies are awfully shy, after all), with your own fairy garden you can be sure that Faeries are resting nearby.