02/11/2026
Samhain blessings ✨
We visited the National Botanic Gardens for their famous Samhain tour and it did not disappoint!
Did you know hawthorn became widely used by Irish farmers once Ireland’s oak forests had been cleared by the English?
Farmers planted hawthorn along the edges of their land to keep cattle and livestock in. And the lone hawthorn, standing by itself in a field, is known as a fairy tree. People believed that a tree could only live up to 400 years on its own if it had some help from the Otherworld.
To this day, you’ll struggle to find an Irish farmer willing to cut down a lone hawthorn.
I highly recommend checking out the National Folklore Collection on duchás.ie - you’ll find plenty of stories about fairies and the deadly fates of people who dared to harm a hawthorn tree!
Walking among the trees at the Botanic Gardens was a beautiful reminder of how much living story the land still holds.