Garden Spells

Garden Spells is the first novel by American author Sarah Addison Allen. Published in 2007, the book was a New York Times Bestseller. The novel tells the story of Claire Waverly, a chef and owner of her own catering company in Bascom, North Carolina. For generations, the Waverly family has tended the garden behind their family home known for the apple tree and edible flowers that grow there. In a twist of magical realism, the plants that grow in the garden possess certain properties that have supernatural effects on whoever consumes them. Claire’s life is thrown off balance when her estranged sister Sydney returns home after a ten-year absence with a five-year-old daughter in tow.

At the beginning of the novel, Claire avoids close relationships out of fear of being abandoned. Her sister, Sydney—with whom she had been close as a child—left Bascom ten years ago for New York with the intention of never returning. The sisters’ mother also ran away from their family when they were children. Claire’s closest relationship is with her elderly cousin, Evanelle. Evanelle is known in the community for giving people strange gifts which later become exactly what they didn’t know they needed—a flashlight before an unexpected power outage, for example. Claire’s neighbor, Professor Tyler Hughes, expresses romantic interest in her but she rebuffs him. Amongst the magical flora in Claire’s garden is an apple tree. Anyone who takes a bite from one of the apples will see the biggest event in their future. Townspeople often sneak into the garden to steal one of the prophetic apples, but Claire buries the apples that fall from the tree so that nobody will have to see things that might be upsetting or traumatic for them.

One day, Claire’s sister Sydney arrives at her home unexpectedly. Sydney has left her home in Seattle, Washington to escape her abusive boyfriend, David. Sydney comes with her and David’s five-year-old daughter, Bay. Claire gives Sydney a job with her catering company and the sisters’ first job together is working an event hosted by Sydney’s ex-boyfriend Hunter and his wife Emma. Unbeknownst to the Waverlys, they were hired to cater the party as part of Hunter’s mother Ariel’s plan to humiliate Sydney and convince her son that Sydney is not worthy of him. Tyler comes to pick Sydney up and Claire alters the food with flowers from her garden that cause the partygoers to regret their treatment of Sydney. Several attendees later call Sydney to apologize for their behavior that day.



Sydney decides to find another way to make a living and rents a chair at a local salon to make use of skills she learned when she attended cosmetology school. Initially, Sydney is not able to acquire any clients. However, when Claire allows Sydney to cut her hair, the attractive results draw in more customers. Sydney reconnects with Henry, a childhood friend who she lost touch with in high school, who now runs a dairy farm. On the Fourth of July, Claire sets up a booth to distribute honeysuckle wine and she and Tyler share a kiss. Afraid of getting closer to Tyler, Claire starts bringing him homemade casseroles with ingredients meant to dispel Tyler’s interest in her. However, even while a former girlfriend of his stays at his home for a couple of days, Tyler finds himself still attracted to Claire. Eventually, Claire discovers she can no longer deny the chemistry building between her and Tyler and the two of them have sex in her garden. Sydney, Henry, Tyler, and Claire go on a double date to the reservoir and bring Bay with them. After seeing them all together in public, Ariel begins to spread rumors that thirty-six-year-old Claire is behaving like a lovesick teenager.

The sisters’ invite their new boyfriends and Evanelle to a gathering in the garden. Evanelle tells Claire and Sydney that the reason their mother left is that she ate off one of the apples in the garden and saw the car accident that would kill her. The party is sitting down to eat when Sydney’s ex David arrives, carrying a gun, and shoots Henry in the hand. David is preparing to go after Sydney when an apple falls at his feet. David takes a bite of the apple and leaves in horror, but he does not share exactly what it is he saw. Claire explains the magic of the tree to Tyler who shares that he ate one of the apples and had a vision of Claire in her garden. At the close of the novel, Bay sits under the apple tree as she did in a dream she once had, long before ever having seen the garden.

Sarah Addison Allen wrote a number of other bestselling novels taking place in the American South. Allen’s book, First Frost, is a sequel to Garden Spells, which details the next chapter in the lives of the Waverly women. In a review of Garden Spells, Booklist writes that Allen’s “entrancing brand of magical realism nimbly blends the evanescent desires of hopeless romantics with the inherent wariness of those who have been hurt once too often.”