“Magic is afoot!” says Witch Hazel, which is fun to say when I see it in a reading. Witch Hazel is a generous, multi-trunk shrub, unusual for its colorful, citrus-scented flowers in late fall and even into winter. The leaves are reddish when they emerge in spring, then golden in the autumn. It’s a very low-maintenance plant that’s resistant to most pests and diseases. Witch Hazel extract, an astringent, is a time-tested remedy with medicinal and cosmetic properties. That qual

How much do I love this ogham? It’s tattooed on my skin. Sure, as a gardener who focuses on native plantings, honeysuckle is a bane. I’ve hired people to help me pull it out, but I can still appreciate how pretty the flowers are, how nice it smells when it’s in bloom, and how GOOD it is at thriving. It isn’t the plant’s fault. All the qualities that make it invasive are advantages: leafing out earlier than anything else in the understory, climbing for sunshine and nutrients,

I can’t pull Gooseberry without giggling, so it’s probably a good thing I don’t see it very often. Gooseberries are shrub-type plants, rather than full trees. They're lively and beautiful in the landscape, great for wildlife, and very yummy in pies. They do fine with some benign neglect, but if you want to harvest any of its fruit in volumes useful for human consumption, you’ll need to take care of it: mulching to prevent weeds, pruning old canes to encourage new growth, and

Like Beth mentioned, Spindle is an ogham with nuance. In the same context as Broom, Spindle relates to home life and chores, but more specifically in the sense that our efforts are part of a larger process. The European spindle tree is unfortunately invasive in my area, so I can’t plant it, but before we understood how aggressively it spread, I definitely liked the shape of it as a small tree and its vibrant color in autumn (it’s commonly called “burning bush” around here).