Plants and everyday Druidry

(Nimue)

Plants are a great thing to focus on if you’re looking for small, simple things to engage with in an everyday way. Being consistent and predictable, plants are easy to engage with. Finding a plant that lives near you is something most of us can do. I favour trees, but if that’s not what your landscape does, any local plant is a good choice.

Find out what your plant is – the internet makes this easy, you can just take a photo and then search for the image. Visit your plant regularly. Everyday might be ideal, but whatever suits you will be fine. Do a bit of reading, find out about your plant – smaller ones can be seasonal so some relationships are only short term.

Visiting your plant regularly will give you a seasonal practice rooted in day to day experience. Following the wheel of the year through the life of a single plant is a really good way of connecting and engaging. 

The odds are that your plant won’t be solitary. Other plants will exist around it, most likely. Insects may interact with it. If you’ve picked a tree then you might also find birds, fungi and assorted creatures inhabiting either the tree or its vicinity. A single tree can show you a lot over time and help you connect with other wild things.

There may be folklore associated with your plant. It may have magical associations, or applications in herbalism. With trees, you can look at traditional uses for the wood, and for anything else the tree produces. This is the kind of thing you can explore gently and when the fancy takes you, but it will enrich your experience of visiting your plant.

If you have bardic inclinations you can draw, photograph, write about or otherwise let yourself be inspired by your plant.

If meditation is your thing, sitting with a plant to just see how the world is where your plant lives can be really rewarding. You don’t have to do anything complicated, just share the space in a contemplative way. If you need a focus for meditation at other times, contemplating your plant is a good choice.

A few minutes a day can make a lot of odds. Taking a couple of minutes to acknowledge and pay attention to a plant in your garden can show you a great deal. Small walks to the nearest tree can open the wild world up to you without requiring huge amounts of time and effort. Feeling a connection to a wild and living being roots your Druidry. It’s a good way of slowing down and building a relationship with the natural world.