Green witchcraft has enjoyed a surge in popularity in the last couple of years. There’s something really appealing about working magic in a way that is aligned with the earth and the power of nature and the aesthetic of practicing magic in beautiful, lush, natural settings is simply too good to pass up for a lot of people. The problem is that green witchcraft can seem really unattainable.
If you live in a tiny apartment in an urban center, how are you supposed to go about living your green witch dreams? It may feel like it’s completely impossible in the world today, and like you might as well just give up on the idea of being a green witch until you can move into some beautiful cottage in the middle of the country where you can roam about the fields. But this is simply not realistic for the majority of people, and it’s also not necessary for you to begin exploring the world of the green witch today. In this article, I’m going to show you how you can begin practicing green witchcraft in tangible, practical ways, no matter what your situation is.
What Is Green Witchcraft?
Before we can get into talking about the practicalities of practicing green witchcraft, we need to define what green witchcraft actually is. Green witchcraft is essentially a form of magic that is focused largely on the earth, working with plants, the power of natural magic, and working in harmony with the local environment. A lot of green witches focus very heavily on things like gardening and growing their own plants, but they also practice wildcrafting, foraging, or simply working with plants they can buy. Many green witches also incorporate elements of eco-consciousness and taking care of the planet into their practice.
Other practices may be involved as well, such as working with the seasons, working with the elements such as fire, water, and wind, which are all part of the natural world, or working with animals. There are really no hard limits about what a green witch can and can’t do. It’s simply a focal point for your personal magical practice. If you like the idea of working primarily with land spirits, plants, and your local environment, then green witchcraft is probably an excellent fit for you.
Practicality vs Aesthetic
The big struggle that most people run into when they start trying to practice green witchcraft is the way that it is portrayed online. Now, I won’t say that I don’t enjoy a beautiful green witch aesthetic as much as the next person, but when all that you see on your Instagram feed and on TikTok are these beautiful, perfectly curated magical practices, it gives you unrealistic expectations about what your practice is supposed to look like. The truth is, you do not have to have some perfectly curated, beautiful aesthetic for your green witchcraft to be A.) connected to the earth and nature and B.) effective and powerful as a magical practice.
That’s the real reason why we’re doing magic, after all! We want the power to be able to change our lives, to impact the world around us, whether that is impacting your local environment and helping the land spirits become happier and healthier, or whether it’s impacting your own personal life and improving your love life, your finances, your career, or whatever it is about your life that you want to improve. By worrying about the aesthetic, instead of focusing on the actual practical application of green witchcraft, you are selling your own power short, and many people struggle to actually do magic when their focus is on making everything look beautiful.
The truth is that modern witchcraft does not have to be beautiful to be effective. Making it pretty is fun, and there can be benefits to that, but if all you can do is magic that is kind of underwhelming and doesn’t look very pretty, that is okay. If it gets results, it is real magic, it is good magic, and you are a real green witch, regardless of whether you have the Pinterest-perfect garden and the Pinterest-perfect cottage aesthetic or not. If your magic works, it works, and that is what I want you to focus on in your green witchcraft. Find ways to use your green witchcraft practices that are practical and that get you results.
Green Witchcraft The Practical Way
So, how do you actually practice green witchcraft in a practical way? The answer is to focus on the magic over the aesthetic and bring your attention to what you can do rather than what you can’t do. It’s way too easy to focus on all of the ways that your craft falls short, all of the ways that you don’t have space for a garden, and all of the ways that you can’t immediately fix the environment around you. But rather than focusing on what you can’t do, you need to be focused on what you can do and the ways that your magic can help you create real change in the world. So let’s take a look at a few practical tips for how you can begin to walk the green path today.
1. Take advantage of whatever your local environment offers
First, you need to take stock of what you actually have available to you. It’s easy to get caught up thinking about how you don’t have any space to grow plants, you don’t have your own garden, and you don’t live out in the country where you can have access to miles of endless natural environments, but you do not need those things to have a connection with nature. Nature is all around you, whether you live in New York City or in the middle of nowhere Iowa. So start by paying attention.
What does your local environment offer you? What plants grow around you? I don’t care where you live, there are plants that grow around you. There are pockets of nature everywhere you go, whether these are plants growing on the sides of roads or big beautiful nature preserves.
It does not matter how you access nature. Nature is there and available for you to access. Your access to nature might primarily consist of the landscaping around your apartment building and the dandelions growing in between sidewalk cracks. If that is what you have available, that is what you work with. I know it doesn’t feel as fun and aesthetically pleasing, but there is still power in the nature that is around you, whether it’s aesthetically appealing or not. In fact, I find that working with the nature that exists in these kinds of rural environments can actually connect you much deeper with the tenacious power of the earth.
I mean, think about it, civilization is doing its absolute best to beat nature back in urban environments and create a cultivated, perfected version of reality. But what does mother nature do? She does not care about all of the ways that we try to make things perfect. She grows anyway. She exists anyway. Those dandelions popping up out of the sidewalk are a reminder that no matter how hard we try to separate ourselves from nature, she is always there waiting for literally any opportunity to show us the power of the natural world. If those tenacious little plants are making their own sacred space in this world, then you can too.
So take a look at what you have available to you. Are there hiking trails nearby? Are there parks nearby? Are there pockets of landscaping near where you live? Are there any garden centers around? Are there community gardens that you could join? And if you don’t have a lot of access to plants in those ways, how can you bring nature to you? Can you grow a windowsill herb garden? Are there herb shops near you that you could frequent? Are there natural objects you could use in your craft? Are there ways for you to volunteer to help keep your local environment healthy, clean, and sustainable? There are so many opportunities for you to deepen your connection with the earth and the plants that grow around you and to use that in your magic. So start by just figuring out what you have available locally and do magic with it!
2. Get to know the plants around you
Next, you’re going to want to start learning about the specific plants that grow around you. Some of these plants might be native to your local environment, but many of them will be transplants that are here because of agriculture, because of landscaping, and lots of other reasons. Just because they’re not native plants does not mean they don’t have magical potential. So get to know everything.
There are some incredibly common plants that grow all over the place that can be used in herbal magic, whether they seem like typically magical plants or not. Every plant has a spirit, and that means every plant can help you in your magic when you work with that plant’s spirit. This gets into the concept of animism. As a green witch, you are primarily working with the spirits of plants and working with genius loci or the spirit of place. These are your local land spirits, your local river spirits, the spirits of trees, mother earth herself, things of that nature. Get to know these beings that are around you.
If your neighbor has a rosemary bush, get to know the spirit of that rosemary bush. Learn about the magical uses of rosemary. If bindweed grows everywhere in your area, learn about bindweed. If dandelions are constantly popping up in your yard or in the cracks in the sidewalk around your apartment building, learn about dandelions and their use in magic. Start paying attention to what is around you, what you have available to you to use magically. Just because it’s not pretty does not mean it’s not good for magic! Many of these plants are incredible magical allies, and you should treat them as such.
3. Get in touch with your local seasons
Start paying attention to the actual local seasonal cycles that you experience. I don’t typically teach the Wheel of the Year because, for the vast majority of people who do not live in either Europe or the Northeast of the U.S., the Wheel of the Year makes no sense.
If you’re a witch who lives in, let’s say, Arizona, the Wheel of the Year has absolutely no bearing on the actual seasons that you experience. The seasons that you will experience in the Southwest are wildly different. Trying to connect with the seasons by following some external calendar that has absolutely no likeness to the real seasons where you live just disconnects you further from nature.
So instead of focusing on these big holidays that are supposed to connect you with nature, focus on the actual seasons that you experience. When does winter turn to spring where you live? What is winter even like where you live? What are the summers like? What plants grow in what seasons? Start to pay attention and really ground yourself and your magic in a deeper connection with the local environment and the seasonal shifts that you experience there.
As a witch who lives in Texas, a lot of the seasonality of my work revolves around seasons of thunderstorms and seasons of drought. My natural environment is very different from what you would expect if you were following the Wheel of the Year. We have two thunderstorm seasons that happen in the spring and in the fall. And I tend to align a lot of my magic with those thunderstorm seasons. For me, thunderstorm season is a time of upheaval. It’s a time for change. It’s a time for really stepping into power and driving forward in my magic and in my life. Summer by contrast can be incredibly hot, and it typically makes me feel very lazy, less motivated, and like I just want to conserve my energy as much as possible.
This is exactly the opposite of what you would be told if you were following the Wheel of the Year. So start to get in touch with what your local seasons are like and develop your own spiritual practice around those seasons based on how the energy of those seasons affects you personally.
4. Find small ways to incorporate your green craft into your life
Finally, find small, simple ways to incorporate your nature magic into your day-to-day life. It can be tempting to only focus on the big things, going out for a big hike way outside the city, or a big volunteering project that you’re working on, or getting your entire green witch garden set up exactly right, but these are not the things that make your green witchcraft practice work.
Focus on the small things. Can you get to know the spirits of the herbal blends that you like to drink in your tea? How can you use maybe one or two of the plants that you use just in your kitchen herbs and spices for hands-on spells? Can you start to connect with the spirits of that basil plant that you have growing in your kitchen?
It’s not necessarily just about the big, exciting, aesthetic things that you do in your magic. A lot of magic is just becoming grounded in the day-to-day reality of the natural world around you and the magic that you can create with it. So begin to focus on these smaller things and allow yourself to really engage with the magic of the world around you.
If I can give you one thing today, let it be this. Absolutely everything around you is magically alive and you can tap into that magic and that natural connection to the spirit of the local environment that you live in whenever you want. Stop letting some expectation of having this perfect aesthetic prevent you from working magic the way you want to work magic. You have access to magic no matter where you live, no matter what season it is, and no matter how natural or unnatural your environment may seem. Magic is your birthright. Go out and find it.
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Updated on March 7, 2025 by Avery Hart
