Walking the Hedge

Gathering in the City

So you live in the city and/or an apartment eh? Don’t despair!

It is harder to walk a nature path if you live in an urban area, or in an apartment, but there are options available to you. Waiting for the once a year chance to go to a campground takes a lot of patience. Let us also not forget most parks and campgrounds are nature reserves, national parks and the like, meaning you cannot gather there, not even ONE stick! If you are in the city, you will have to get quite creative in looking for places to gather or practice wort cunning and wildcrafting. Here are a few suggestions:

• Vacant lots. Do check for “No Trespassing” signs first!
• Ditches. I know, icky, but you will be amazed at what you can find growing in a ditch. Looking out the window of my RV, I see sunflowers & tansy growing tall in the ditch across the street, and that is just at first glance.
• Schoolyards, playgrounds, neighborhood parks. Some cities do not mind a certain amount of picking in such places, so check local bylaws.
• Do you have family or friends who hate to work in their yard? Every time you go over for a visit, you cringe at the sight of the unruly mess that is their backyard? Are you open about your path with them? They might just be wiling to let you scout around in their overgrown garden!
• The beach, as well as stream and river banks are a great place. If there is a creek or something along those lines in your area, you might just get lucky, and wet.
• Offering to help an elderly neighbor weed her garden of unwanted plants can be fruitful. Go visit Grandma and offer to do some yard work for her. You’ll be doing a good deed, and get those rosehips you were hoping for.
• Construction sites will often have plants, shrubs and trees tossed out like trash to the side. The men working there might give you a funny look if you ask to go through the pile, but they will likely let you.
• Keep your eyes peeled for when the guys from the city are out trimming trees and tending local gardens, parks, roadsides and museum grounds, asking them to let you go through their discards is worth the raised eyebrows.
• Volunteer at local gardens, reforestation projects, nature reserves and arboretums, likely they will not mind if you take a few sprigs home with you after a few hours of work.
• Railroad tracks. Walking along these tracks, I find all sorts of plants growing along the shoulder on either side of the tracks, along and in the ditch beside, and reaching up in the center of the tracks.
• Go walk the dog, or go for a jog. You might just pass by someone pruning their birch tree or find a pile of clippings on a neighbor’s curb.

These plants may need a bit more washing than ones found in the wild, and you may not know if they have been sprayed with fertilizer or weed killer. It can be worth it to check local bylaws concerning spraying weed killers and such, many cities do not allow it, or only certain kinds. If you are unsure if something you gathered has been sprayed, just do not ingest it. Use if for a smudge stick, or incense, or to dry and decorate your altar instead.

Gathering in the city means you may have to be bold, and charming. It can take some guts to ask the guy down the street for a branch of his oak tree, since he is trimming it anyways. Just give them a big smile and say you need it for arts and crafts…it’s the truth after all; it’s for the magickal ARTS and for witchCRAFT! Telling the guy weeding the lawn at city hall that you are an amateur herbalist and collecting weeds from around the area IS the truth after all.

Keep one of those handy canvas shopping bags from the grocery store in your car trunk, with an extra pair of pruners or strong scissors, just in case you happen by something. You never know what you might find, and where!

~ Juniper for walkingthehedge.net
Permission to reproduce is granted, so long as this disclaimer and the author’s name is attached.

Related posts:

1. Correspondences: Step One Towards Figuring it Out for Yourself
2. The First Thing You Need