Chapter One
Planning Your Dream Herbal Landscape
The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.
~ Alfred Austin
The medicinal herb gardens created by the late Dr. Jim Duke: the Green Farmacy Gardens in Fulton, Maryland
Organic Holistic Herb Gardening
My approach to holistic herb gardening mirrors my approach to holistic healing and herbalism. In holistic healing, we explore the whole individualâbody, mind, temperament, home, work, diet, lifestyle, and communityâand not just their disease or disorder. The holistic approach to remedying imbalances isnât limited to herbs; it also includes strategies aimed at improving diet, sleep, lifestyle, relationships, and community. Much as whole foods are more nourishing to the body than relying on supplements alone for nutrition, nourishing and building soil is more effective in supporting plant life than counting on fertilizer alone, even if itâs organic.
Youâve heard the saying âAn ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.â Well, the same is true for plants. A healthy plant, one whose needs are met by the garden and gardener, is more resistant to disease and problematic insects and is more resilient to stressful conditions such as drought or extreme temperatures. Holistic herbalists look for the safest, most effective botanical remedies available. Similarly, holistic herb gardeners use environmentally sound solutions for garden problems. It is sadly ironic when medicinal herbs are grown with chemicals like herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides, which are linked to the increased incidence of cancer and the disruption of healthy hormone function. Thereâs something inherently wrong with poisoning the planet and our bodies to grow a plant that is meant to heal.
Much of my approach to gardening is inspired by the idea of permacultureâa set of practices geared toward designing sustainable and regenerative agricultural and cultural systems. Itâs rooted in traditional Indigenous systems of agriculture and knowledge of natural ecosystems. Permaculture is a living, evolving set of ideas and principles that can be applied to many aspects of gardening, landscaping, building, and human relationships. It focuses on close observation of interconnectedness with an eye toward cocreating a vibrant and sustainable whole for all of life, elements, and planetary and societal health. To learn more, I recommend Gaiaâs Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway.
- BUILD THE SOIL INSTEAD OF FERTILIZING PLANTS. Nourishing the soil is a long-term strategy that honors your gardenâs place in the intricate web of life. Build your soil by adding copious amounts of organic matter, introducing and supporting healthy soil organisms, and growing cover crops. Foster ongoing soil fertility by mulching and reducing tillage, thus allowing soil microbes and beneficial garden animals to flourish. Building soil fertility may be more work initially, but it amounts to less work in the long run, as the plants are happier and healthier on a whole-foods diet of luscious dirt! Weâll explore soil fertility in Chapter Two.
- GROW PLANTS THAT LOVE YOUR CLIMATE. Choose plants that are suited to your climate and youâre more likely to meet with success and a greater harvest of medicinals. Itâs less work to grow herbs that donât need a lot of inputs like irrigation and soil amending. Youâll find siting chartsârecommended herbs by climate and landscapeâhere. Youâll also find extensive Regional Profiles in the Healing Garden Gateway (healinggardengateway.com), which cover the herbs best suited to the climate and soils for each bioregion.
- PREVENTION OVER TREATMENT. Nurture plant and animal diversity in your landscape for garden and planetary health. Youâll invite a vibrant community of pollinators and beneficial insects through creating varied habitats, interplanting multiple species of herbs, and growing native flora. A balanced ecosystem encourages healthy plants by reducing disease and unchecked insect infestation. Chapter Three explores holistic solutions for plant diseases and problematic insects.
- YOU ARE WOVEN INTO THE RICH TAPESTRY OF LIFE. Consider how your actions affect the water, soil, air, and other organisms you share this planet with. Is your garden problem worth creating a legion of issues for generations to come? Choose the simplest remedies to reduce garden pests and forgo powerful insecticidesâorganic and non-natural alikeâthat harm all neighboring insects and not just the pest at hand. For example, instead of choosing quick measures like herbicides to control weeds, consider mulching, which keeps opportunistic plants at bay while nourishing and cooling the soil.
Designing Your Herbal Landscape
You might envision a traditional herb garden as a small separate area of the landscape, filled with tidy, low-growing culinary herbs. And while that kind of garden certainly has its place, we can expand our scope by imagining a variety of herbs, tall and short, spreading and climbing, woven throughout the landscape, providing textural beauty, color, windbreak, shade, aromas, food, medicine, flavoring, and shelter for native wildlife. Here, we have a full-blown herbal landscapeâwith medicinals that serve plentiful functions for the gardeners and increase biodiversityârather than an isolated herb garden. Before we discuss how you might plan for your herbal landscape, itâs helpful to first define what an herb is. An herb is a useful plant that provides one or more benefits to humans: medicine, flavoring, dye, fragrance, or ceremonial material. Depending on the species, the parts used may include the flowers, fruit, bark, roots, leaves, or seeds. Some herbs are both medicinal and edible, whereas others are primarily culinary (used to flavor food in small to modest amounts) with secondary medicinal uses, and some are solely medicinal. An herb plant can take many forms. In addition to the classic garden herbs, which are familiar perennials or annuals, some herbs are shrubs, vines, or groundcovers. An herb can be an evergreen tree, such as a pine, spruce, or juniper, or a deciduous tree, like ginkgo, slippery elm, or elderberry, which loses its leaves in the fall.
Wide-mowed pathways and herb gardens, organized by organ systems, at the Green Farmacy Gardens in Fulton, Ma...
