Step One: Register Emacs with Growl
We need to register Carbon Emacs with Growl. This is a one time setup task. The following AppleScript script can be run in Script Editor.

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
	-- Declare a list of notification types
	set the allNotificationsList to {"Emacs Notification"}

	-- Declare list of active notifications.  If some of them
	-- isn't activated, user can do this later via preferences
	set the enabledNotificationsList to {"Emacs Notification"}

	-- Register our application in Growl.
	register as application "Emacs.app" all notifications allNotificationsList default notifications enabledNotificationsList icon of application "Emacs.app"
end tell

Step Two: Create Growl Notification Script
This is a template of the AppleScript that will be used in the Emacs Lisp function. It can be tested by executing it in the Script Editor.

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
	notify with name "Emacs Notification" title "Emacs alert" description "Message!!!" application name "Emacs.app"
end tell

Step Three: Emacs Lisp Function
Create an Emacs Lisp function that can be invoked with a title and message.

(defun bja-growl-notification (title message &optional sticky)
  "Send a Growl notification"
  (do-applescript
   (format "tell application \"GrowlHelperApp\"
              notify with name \"Emacs Notification\" title \"%s\" description \"%s\" application name \"Emacs.app\" sticky %s
           end tell"
           title
           (replace-regexp-in-string "\"" "''" message)
           (if sticky "yes" "no"))))

This can be tested with the following function which sends two growl notifications. The “sticky” one requires an explicit dismissal.

(defun bja-growl-test ()
  (interactive)
  (bja-growl-notification "Emacs Notification" "This is my message")
  (bja-growl-notification "Emacs Notification" "This is my sticky message" t))

UPDATE: I noticed bja-growl-notification was failing if the message had embedded double quotes, so I added a call to replace-regexp-in-string to replace them with two apostrophes.

UPDATE 2: My main motivation for setting this up was to be able to generate growl notifications from ERC (Emacs IRC client). However, I quickly realized that having a generic reminder that I can easily fire up from within Emacs is very handy. Here’s the code:

(defun bja-growl-timer (minutes message)
  "Issue a Growl notification after specified minutes"
  (interactive (list (read-from-minibuffer "Minutes: " "10")
                     (read-from-minibuffer "Message: " "Reminder") ))
  (run-at-time (* (string-to-number minutes) 60)
               nil
               (lambda (minutes, message)
                 (bja-growl-notification "Emacs Reminder" message t))
               minutes
               message))