Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: The Fragrant Garden - Herbs for All

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Photo courtesy of Leonard Moorehead

Scent is the key to memory. Breath deep, inhale the garden’s palpable aroma. All fragrance identifies. A newborn child’s first breath is of mother and father. Marvelous in so many degrees, the scent of a child’s hair remains with parents for life. We link acceptance and love with scent. All human resource guides include a delicate paragraph regarding malodorous colleagues, they are replete in kind phrases and coached in the language of care. Our sensitivity is profound, a neutral third party is often delegated the conversation. A lot is at stake. Decisions are quick. Survival has instilled repugnance for many substances and circumstances. Judgement is a neuron away from flight or fight. We learn lessons educators emulate but cannot surpass. Everyone is the family mutt who harasses the local skunk. Love can be a tomato juice bath. Heroism is to endure the cold garden hose shower. The desire to be part of trumps fear and discomfort. We remember scent.

Gardens are cultural time capsules. Far too many urbanites are at a distance from their food sources. Nature’s dislike of vacuums fills our vacant lots with opportunistic survivors, some native to N. America, many others brought by waves of immigrants. Lots of common roadside plants were originally essential for an English household. Medicine, dyes, and beverages remain important to us, they are distilled, researched, and consumed in colossal quantities. Chemistry and industry have hidden roots. Urban gardens continue the once commonplace cure for bleeding, Achillea officinalis or “Yarrow” as pungent insect deterrents. The Utopian settlements efforts to be like the City on the Hill, began with seeds, cuttings, fodder brought from “This other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by Nature for herself, against infection and the hand of war” Colonists arrived with Oberon’s bower a contemporary reality. Virtually all plants Shakespeare describes are widespread in N. America. They brought the essentials and discovered native herbs to include, like Joe Pye Weed and tobacco.

Many remain in our gardens such as Lady’s Bedstraw, once stuffed into mattresses in reverence, as Mary had stuffed the manger for its soporific ability to induce blessed sleep, or as one of a few sources of red dye extracted from the roots. I cultivate a wide range of fragrant herbs and others for their beneficial influences upon soil, other plants, insects, and birds. There is another more personal reason to cultivate herbs. They have persona, each distinct scent claims a moment forever and carries on names.

Licorice scented Anise Hyssop first arrived in the garden grown in a pot by my friend Brian. Licorice pervades the plant, bees cluster around its heather purple blooms that produce myriads of seed. Anise hyssop is a perennial although I treat Anise Hyssop, not for its medicinal purposes but as a free sowing annual to be weeded out of the permanent mulch as needed but not needed so much. Butterflies gather around the volunteers.

The Victorians discovered scented geraniums. Roses offer a vast array of fragrance. I plant Rose scented geranium in pots and often next to roses more noted for color than fragrance. Musky rose geranium are not frost tolerant and require more or less the same care as their familiar flowering cousins. Fine with very well drained soil of modest fertility, rose geraniums do best in sunshine. One of spring’s noblest quests is the search for varieties of scented geraniums. Not all rose scents are equal as are noses. Don’t stop at the rose scented varieties. Venture further and compare orange, lemon, lime, or spicy cinnamon, nutmeg and pineapple. All thrive in tight pots. Has lemon or pineapple piqued your interest?

Lemon balm, Melissa officinalis, arrived with the colonists. A member of the mint family, it does not roam under mulches and has a more confined habit. Never much more than a foot tall it suffers lawn mowers, children and dogs with aplomb. A sprig in ice water adds just the right amount of lemon. Cut back, it rebounds. Left alone to flower, lemon balm will establish itself on the margins of the garden or surprise composters, the seeds remain viable in compost for the opportune moment.

Large pots were filled with compost this spring for a pair of showy Mandeville vines trained upwards on hand wrought bamboo trellis’s, to some minds each a version of the Eiffel Tower. Like all of the potted plants, a layer of seashells surrounds the primary plant, not so much for their bleached white, associations with happy days beach combing or slow release of calcium carbonate and marine trace elements. A lower purpose suits the seashells just fine, a gardener can hose the pot with complete assurance the direct flow of hose water will not splash or erode the transplant. Busy gardeners cannot throw the baby out with the wash. Within a month of planting the pots to Mandeville, lemon balm emerged from between the seashells and formed a thick lemon scented sprawled apron. Consider planting containers that host a vertical climbing plant and another that sprawls downwards. Urban gardeners use every space to advantage, especially if composted seeds offer a bonus crop.

Photo courtesy of Leonard Moorehead

Another welcome immigrant is Lemon verbena from Argentina. Widely available and affordable, the smallest sprig emits intense lemon fragrance. Lemon verbena tolerates pots, it bursts into a small shrub in one season when grown directly in the ground. Not winter hardy in Zone 6, lemon verbena is tenacious. Pots brought into the cellar with pulled up geraniums and potatoes will wither and be sorry looking by April. However, 5 days after a soak and in the sunshine, the stems swelled and green leaves emerged for another summer of the best lemon scent in the natural world. My friend David is proud of his Columbian heritage, his mother Carolina’s eyes wrinkled in delight to find such an old friend so far away from home. Lemon verbena is widespread throughout the cooler frost free elevations of the Andes and grows easily whether in a sunny or very bright location.

Beebalm, bergamot, or Monarda, is the essential ingredient in Earl Grey’s tea. A Native American member of the mint family, beebalm has lots to offer gardeners. Tough as nails, it forms thick mats like all the mints but prefers to roam and peters out where originally planted. Beebalm allures. Hummingbirds flicker around the flamboyant scarlet, mauve or pink blooms during the dog days of summer. It is easy to lift and divide to propagate and share with friends. Cut the blooming plants just after their full bloom in July and welcome a fresh second green flush of growth.

What group of fragrant herbs is complete without Lavender? Lavender will thrive for you if you play by the rules. Are you the gardener who believes every plant will thrive if only the soil were returned to Eden like humus rich condition? Are you convinced all nutrients were leached from soils by careless farming or drenched in chemical fertilizers hostile to watersheds and micro fauna? Is it possible to create a soil rich in deep humus perfect for all plants? For those who interrupt the huge flow of compostable materials and direct them into the garden, the results are wondrous. But not for all plants!

Lavender is the perfect example. As my soil became ever more fertile, the lavender withered. It was unhappy in the sunniest, warmest location. Extreme measures were called for. I dug away the improved soil and piled it around the more grateful roses. A mere 2 feet below the garden is sugar grain alluvial quartz sand left by glaciers thousands of years ago. I dig a new pit each year for the sand and filled the lavender bed with sand. Clean, silt free sand is handy for the winter driveway and I keep a few buckets under shelter. Each autumn I pack into the pit tough aster stems, broken branches, and countless leaves. Each is a fertile, moist penetration into ancient sediments. The lavender? Robust and full of blooms! Drainage is far more important than the plants needs for nutrients. I cover the sand with mulch much as the rest of the garden but do little more than sprinkle a few handfuls of bone meal over the bed and do not water. The lavender has spread, right up to the border between sand and humus rich soil.

Herbs and flowers dry well. Tie into several smaller than one or two larger bundles and hang from a rafter under shelter, a garage or shed works very well. Be patient, most dry out in a few weeks, some in days. For smaller herbs such as rosemary or lavender, an old screen winter propped over open space in the garage or toolshed is better. Spread a thin layer of plant on the screen, place paper beneath to collect the fragrant chafe. You’ll soon have wicker baskets picked up for very little at yard sales or thrift shops full of fragrant herbs. I’ll take the fragrant garden any day, it is always with me.

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence, Rhode Island. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.