A Garden Of Healing Herbs

There are four main stages of untaming the medicinal garden, and they can be practiced simultaneously, after being developed gradually over a period of years. The first stage is to grow herbs in beds of rows, circles, geometric or random patterns, in much the same way as vegetables are grown. The garden bed has a definite role in many landscapes. It is easy to plan and care for, easy to protect with fences, and easy to harvest from. These kinds of well-defined gardens are attractive and can be located close to the house for convenience and for the visual delight they offer. The particular design and layout of the herb bed can be as varied as the number of herbs being grown and the types of people growing them.

The backyard as a landscape of herbs

The next stage or element of the untamed herb garden is the integrated landscape. Design elements such as hedges, borders, ground covers and lawns, screens, pools, streams, walls, flower beds, orchards and trees are all seen as potential sites for growing herbs. The idea is to liberate your herbs from the conventional garden bed and spread them all around. Thus, a hedge becomes a bed of lavender or hyssop; borders are planted with mixed groups of herbs like borage, calendula, yarrow, and parsley; or singly with comfrey, mints, or aromatics. The lawn is replaced with plants like bearberry, thyme, pennyroyal, or German chamomile. For a screen, a grove of elderberry, poplar, slippery elm, and birch trees is planted along the edge of the property. A small pool of water is edged with wild ginger, chickweed, licorice, and horsetail, while a little stream draining the pool is planted with watercress. The front and top of a stone wall can be planted with Mediterranean herbs like sage, marjoram, rosemary, and thyme. In the flower beds, healing flowers like peony, Echinacea, yarrow, and elecampane are planted along with the more conventional ornamentals. A small orchard can include medicinal fruit or nut trees like apple and butternut and can also be home to herbs such as garlic, alfalfa, and clover. A stately basswood tree in the yard attracts bees to the landscape while providing comfortable shade and a soothing floral tea. Other healing shade trees like beech, bay, and oak can be planted, too.

A landscape like this is naturally efficient because of its many "edges." In ecological terms, an edge is a place where one type of plant community or geologic feature meets another. Major edges commonly exist where a forest meets a field or grassland, along the banks of rivers and lakes, on the seashore, at a mountain's timberline, or where a meadow turns into a marsh.

The semi-wild herb garden

The integrated, planned landscape is only the second stage of untaming the medicinal garden. Next comes the semi-wild area. This could be a natural orchard with herbs growing randomly. Or it could be a vacant field, an abandoned woodlot, a bog, or swampy area, or any somewhat out-of-the-way place. In the semi-wild garden, size is not as important as the ability to let nature take its course. In the semi-wild garden, domestic herbs are allowed to revert back to their primitive habits, while native plants are allowed to prosper and grow as well. If the semi-wiId garden is a field, then an array of herbs like catnip, mugwort, yarrow, burdock, dock, chicory, anise, alfalfa, horseradish, mullein, mustard, and nettles might be sown or planted randomly, and then left to themselves. In woodland settings, ginseng and goldenseal are perfect semi-wild crops. In a marshy area, plants like licorice, horsetail, pennyroyal, wild ginger, or spearmint can be set loose on their own.

In their natural state, most herbs follow definite patterns of succession. Some, like plantain, yarrow, chamomile, mullein, and dock, are important pioneers of new plant communities. They help to stabilize, enrich, and penetrate open areas that are too marginal for other plants. Herbs like catnip, gravelroot, blackberry, dandelion, wild sage, and mugwort will follow the early pioneers in colonizing new grounds. Alfalfa, clover, burdock, and the aromatic herbs come a little later, when the soil has been enriched further. And some herbs, like nettles, mustard, and holy thistle, are sure indicators of a relatively rich soil.

The semi-wild garden often starts out with an array of herbs growing on their own. The types of native plants present can lend clues about the chances of success for other introduced species. For example, if a field contains only pioneer plants, the introduction of next-stage herbs may be moderately successful. But bringing in later-stage herbs and abandoning them to the untamed garden is probably a waste of time and plants. You need to get the soil in better condition before planting the later-stage herbs. On the other hand, a field filled with wild alfalfa, nettles, and thistles may be ripe for its next stage of succession: bushes and trees.

This third stage of the untamed medicinal garden doesn't have to start with an already wild area. It can easily be created from a very tame environment. In fact, many landscaped yards and gardens become semi-wild with no difficulty at all, when left to themselves. But there is also a method to the madness. When a wild or abandoned area is "developed" as a semi-wild garden, its rate of ecological succession can be increased. In one way, this is the goal of natural farming. Starting with a relatively simple and fragile ecology, the land is brought into maturity through the stages of succession. This kind of wild farming or primitive agriculture is also a very sophisticated way to grow natural medicinal herbs.

Herbs from the wild

The fourth stage of the untamed medicinal garden is made up of all the places where herbs grow by themselves. It is tempting to say this means the wilderness, but this is not quite true. The distinguishing characteristic is wildness, not wilderness. Wild herbs are those which are fresh, which are free from the influence of cultivation. They can be found in many places-in fields and forests, in meadows and on mountains, along stream banks and ponds, in marshes, bogs or swamps, in isolated areas and on the edges of towns and cities.

To gather wild herbs, you must know a few things that are not important to the stay-at -home gardener. First, you have to know where to find the plants. The easiest way to do this is to just begin to look. Although this technique sounds a bit simplistic, it forms the basis of wild herb collecting. There are many healing plants all around, but we don't know them because we never bother to look for them. So when you go on walks, rides, drives, or hikes, watch for herbs or herb habitats. Even if you don't see the herb itself, look for a likely place the herb might be growing. If you pass a cool, shaded brook in an open woods, and you have a hunch there may be some wild ginger or horsetail growing there, stop and look to see if your guess is right.

Another gatherer's technique is to hold a picture of the plant in your mind. It will be easier to recognize that way. And when you find the first specimen in the field, concentrate on it for awhile. Look at it from several different angles. Notice how it blends in or stands out from the surrounding foliage. Then continue to contemplate the plant's appearance for awhile. If the herb is one that is hard to spot, this technique will pay off in making it easier for you to locate other plants. After you've trained your eyes to see, you'll be amazed at how many more plants of the same species are right around you.

After you've found an herb, but before you collect any of it, proper identification is needed. This is absolutely critical when you are gathering plants for medicinal use, whether they will be taken internally or used externally. Of course, it helps to have a general sense of what the herb looks like before you set out the door. The easiest way to do this is to have it pointed out to you by someone else whose word is reliable. And unless you are totally familiar with the plant in question, by all means have it positively identified after you find it in the field. One way to do this if you have some knowledge of botany is to use the keys in a botanical text or field guide.

It helps to keep a journal of the wild herbs in your area. As you visit them through-out the year, make notes about their life cycle, appearance, surroundings, and locations. If you want to, you can plot your wild herb finds on a map. By keeping careful records, you can gradually develop an intimate knowledge of the healing plants that grow in your locale. This information will pay off when you make plans for harvesting the bounty of wild medicinal plants.

The entire issue of gathering herbs on public land is one that is very vague and ambiguous. Technically, it is illegal to take anything out of the national forests without a permit. And yet, every year thousands of pounds of wild herbs are collected on public land and sold by professional wild crafters. For example, every autumn tons of cascara sagrada bark are collected from public lands in the Pacific Northwest. The bark is sold to herb distributors and pharmaceutical companies for use in laxative preparations. It is an odd situation that falls into a legal and regulatory limbo: Federal agencies have no category for issuing permits to gather medicinal herbs, and they generally don't enforce regulations against it.

• Herbs in containers
• Working with the earth: garden soils
• Propagation techniques for herb gardeners
• General guidelines for harvesting herbs
• Drying herbs
• Scented herb garden
• Herbs and names
• Pests, diseases, and disorders

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