Garden Spells

Garden Spells is the debut novel by American author Sarah Addison Allen, published in 2007. The novel, an example of the urban fantasy genre, relates the story of a pair of Southern sisters coming to terms with their heritage. The book became a New York Times bestseller, was recognized on the American Library Association’s Reading List for Best Women’s Fiction of 2007, and won the 2008 SIBA Book Award for fiction. Following the success of Garden Spells, Addison’s subsequent novels, like Other Birds (2022), frequently combine Southern, small-town settings with magical elements and touches of whimsy. A sequel to Garden Spells, First Frost, appeared in 2015.

In Garden Spells, Claire Waverley finds her secure routine challenged when her younger sister, Sydney, returns to their small town of Bascom, North Carolina, and brings her five-year-old daughter, Bay. With the help of a wise relative, Evanelle, and the intervention of a lively apple tree, all the Waverley women come to terms with their gifts and learn to admit love into their lives. With themes touching on The Influence of Place on Identity and The Appropriate Exercise of Talent, Garden Spells addresses how Healing Generational Wounds and making peace with the past can lead to new love and a sense of belonging.

This guide refers to the Bantam paperback edition, published in 2008.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of physical abuse, emotional abuse, rape, graphic violence, and death.

Plot Summary

Claire Waverley, 34 and single, tends the garden behind the Queen-Anne style home that has belonged to the Waverleys of Bascom, North Carolina, for several generations. Within the garden resides an apple tree, the fruit of which reveals to the eater the most significant event of their life. The plants that grow around the tree have special properties and induce emotions or memories in the person who eats them. Claire has built a successful catering business out of preparing food with Waverley plants.

Claire is visited by an older relative, Evanelle, who is widowed but also a Waverley. Each Waverley woman possesses a special gift or ability, and for that reason, the family has a reputation for being odd. Evanelle’s gift is that she feels compelled to give people things, even if she doesn’t know why they might need the item.

At a party she caters for local college faculty, Claire meets art professor Tyler Hughes, who has recently moved in next door to her. Claire is drawn to but unsettled by Tyler. Claire’s mother lived a wandering, unrooted lifestyle when Claire was young and only returned to Bascom when she was pregnant with Claire’s younger sister, Sydney. Both girls were raised by their grandmother after their mother, Lorelei, left them and later died in a car crash.

Sydney, who never liked being a Waverley, left town when she was 18. Claire hasn’t been in touch with her for 10 years. Claire clings to her home and her Waverley identity, and she doesn’t want to admit change into her life, as that could lead to getting hurt. However, when Sydney and her five-year-old daughter, Bay, show up at her house, Claire doesn’t hesitate to give them a place to stay. Sydney’s partner, David, was abusive, and when she tried leaving him once before, David found them and forced Sydney to return to him.

Sydney wants a secure home for Bay, but Claire is convinced that Sydney will leave again. Still, she offers Sydney work with her catering business, and the sisters cautiously begin to connect. Sydney instructs Bay not to eat apples from the tree, but Tyler, who doesn’t know of the tree’s reputation, eats one and dreams of Claire. Later, Sydney gets a job at a local salon.

Emma Clark was Sydney’s rival during high school, jealous of Sydney because the boy Emma wanted, Hunter John Matteson, was in love with her. Hunter John broke up with Sydney at graduation, which led Sydney to leave town, and Emma Clark married him. They now have two children and an expensive home, and Emma enjoys their love life, since it is well known in Bascom that Clark women are skilled at sex. Emma’s mother, who fears Sydney will try to entice Hunter John away from Emma, hires Claire to cater a party at the Matteson house. Sydney is humiliated at being treated like she is lower class, but Claire tries to make things right by adding plants to the food that make the guests feel embarrassed about being mean to Sydney.

Claire asks Sydney to stay in town, but Sydney becomes discouraged when she has no customers at her job in the salon because of Emma’s mother’s vindictiveness. Claire, who has always felt comfortable with her gift and insists that the Waverleys aren’t strange, tries to discourage Tyler’s interest in her, but she wants Sydney to stay. When Claire goes to the salon and Sydney cuts her long hair in a very flattering style, Claire tells Sydney that her skill with hair is part of her Waverley magic.

At the town’s Fourth of July celebration, Sydney reconnects with Henry Hopkins, who was her best friend during elementary school. Henry is still attracted to Sydney, and they begin to spend more time together, though Sydney considers him simply a friend. Claire kisses Tyler and feels intensely attracted to him, but she’s afraid she’ll be hurt if she enters a relationship. Sydney thinks Claire should take the risk and encourages Tyler to approach Claire one night when she is in the garden. Their evening of intimacy is exactly what Tyler dreamed of when he ate the apple.

During a picnic at the local reservoir, Sydney and Claire reach a new level of connection when they share their pasts. Claire admits what it was like living with their mother without a home, and Sydney revises her belief that their mother’s lifestyle was romantic. Sydney reveals to Claire that she left an abusive relationship with Bay’s father.

Claire decides she wants to get close to Tyler, and Sydney is surprised by her desire for Henry. Both girls are taken aback when Evanelle tells them their mother, Lorelei, behaved wildly because she ate one of the apples when she was young, and it showed her that she would die in a car crash.

Claire is hosting a garden party when David arrives, having tracked Sydney using pictures of their mother that she left behind at the house. David has a gun and shoots Henry. The tree defends the family by throwing an apple at David. When David eats the apple, his demeanor changes drastically, and Sydney guesses he has seen how he will die. David flees.

Several days later, Bay lies under the apple tree, listening to the rustle of the photographs caught in the boughs. She holds a brooch Evanelle gave her up to the light, creating a prism of color, and this convinces Bay that she is finally in the place she belongs. With Sydney dating Henry and Claire and Tyler making plans to marry, Bay feels certain that things are just as they should be.