Topiarised gardens.

[Choisya]

I LOVE topiary and my favourite English garden is at Levens Hall in Cumbria, near the Lake District, where a lot of the topiary is 300 years old!  Here is a little video of it - topiary to die for! Reputedly the best in the world.

The Italians are famous for their topiarised gardens, which are very cool in the heat of the day because of their use of tall cypresses to provide shade.  Here are some examples, of which Guisti Giardino, near Verona (and Juliet's balcony), is my favourite. 

[becke_davis]

Thanks so much for sharing those, Choisya! I haven't been to England or Italy in years, but now that my kids are finally out of college, maybe I'll get over there again. I'll put these on my "must see" list.

I lived in the Greater London area for seven years -- many, many years ago -- and Dartford wasn't far. We used to go here a lot:   http://www.hallplace.com/

[Ellen_Dugan]

How did the Garden Witch title come about?

It's not a persona, it is who I truly am.  "Garden Witch" is a phrase that I coined when I wrote my first book, Garden Witchery.

I describe a Garden Witch as a "practical, down  to earth type of magickal practitioner. A Witch who is well versed in herbal knowledge and its uses, and who is a magickal gardener."

Garden Witchery 

Years later, while I was working on the sequel to the first gardening book, Garden Witch's Herbal I kept getting requests for Garden Witch theme merchandise.....

Garden Witch's Herbal 

So a friend who is a graphic designer helped me take my favorite photos from my magickal gardens and then we added quotes from my books. These images were added onto mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, journals, boxes and tote bags and I opened a cafe press store. This year while I was on tour I gave away the tote bags to one lucky class attendee at every tour stop. It was fun and folks loved the totebags.

If you'd like to visit the cafe Press store and peruse all of the "Garden Witch" goodies here is the web address.

www.cafepress.com/ellendugan

I also have a newsletter that is generated from that CafePress store and it has a huge readership now. You can sign up for the newsletter from my website's  home page. www.ellendugan.com

The Youtube videos are from Magick School TV interviews and they were fun to do. When I look at them now I am always surprised to see how much I have changed. I lost 60 pounds over a 12 month period and have kept it off for over a year now.   So it still startles me to see how much I have really changes- physically.

I have several interviews to do today and more research and writing for the 12th book, so Im going to hop off of here and get my day started. 

Blessed be, Ellen Dugan

[becke_davis]

Thanks, Ellen - I just signed up for your newsletter!

[becke_davis]

A big thanks to Ellen for joining us this month!