By Peggy Riccio
I love being able to step out into the garden and snip fresh herbs whenever I need them. Yesterday, I was making ham and bean stew in the crockpot. I was inspired to add thyme so I cut off a few sprigs from the thyme growing in the front of the house. I looked around and snipped even more herbs: cutting celery, oregano, sage, and rosemary. Except for the cutting celery, these are perennial herbs that should be in everyone’s garden. They can be tucked in the ornamental bed just like any other perennial plant. In the spring, you can purchase the small plants from a nursery or you can ask a friend for a cutting or division. Once you have them in your garden, you can enjoy them year-round and nothing will bother them, not even deer.
Cutting Celery
Botanically speaking, the cutting celery is a biennial. It puts its energy into foliage the first year and then into flowering and setting seed the next year. In my Zone 7 garden, I can harvest the foliage any time so it acts like a perennial. I am sure it is because the seed drops, germinates, and produces new plants each year. I always grow it in one place, under the dappled shade of a tree and where a tiny stream runs through after it rains. This gives the celery enough moisture. The plant is smaller with thinner stems than store-bought stalk celery (it is the center plant in the bowl in the photo). The taste is like stalk celery but with a peppery, pungent bite. It can be used fresh in a salad, in sandwiches, or sautéed with onions and carrots, which is what I did for the bean stew.
Thyme
Thyme is a perennial shrub with very small leaves (in upper left quadrant in the bowl). It is only about six inches tall, making it a good groundcover. Because the thin wiry stems root easily, it is a great plant to have in order to cut and root stems in the spring to place in containers with summer annuals for the “spiller” effect. Culinary thyme remains green and above ground all winter long. It can be harvested and used in the kitchen any time of the year. There are variegated forms of thyme as well as flavored thymes such as coconut, lemon, and spicy orange. Thyme prefers full sun and well-drained soil. The leaves can be used fresh or dried.
Oregano
Oregano is an herbaceous perennial (in bottom part of bowl). It grows back every spring, reaches about a foot tall, flowers, and then dies back in the fall. Usually though with our mild winters, there are green leaves at the base year-round. In the early spring I cut back the dead flower stalks and remove the debris so fresh new growth can push through. Mine is in full sun and well-drained soil. Oregano is a great plant to have in the garden for the culinary use as well as the flowers. The flowers are small but attract beneficial insects and pollinators. Oregano leaves can be used fresh or dried and we use them for the bean stew, pizza, pasta sauce, poultry rub, and stuffing.
Sage
Sage is a woody shrub, about one to two feet tall. There are many types of sage but if you want to make sure you are purchasing culinary sage, look for Salvia officinalis with grey green leaves. Sage prefers full sun and well-drained soil. The leaves can be used fresh or dried for many dishes such as poultry rub, sausage, stuffing, and root vegetables. You can cut just a few leaves as you need them since they are pungent (top of the bowl).
Rosemary
I have the ‘Arp’ rosemary plant in full sun, on the southern side of the house in well drained soil. It grows so well I trim it back every year to keep it in proportion to the rest of the front garden. Rosemary blooms in the cool months and the purple/blue flowers are edible. The leaves are so flavorful you do not need many of them and they can be used fresh or dried. This plant is easy to propagate by stem cuttings or layering. Rosemary is versatile because the stems or branches can be used as well as the foliage and flowers. Line a platter with branches and then put a roast on top or use them as stirrers in drinks. The leaves can be used in pasta sauce, yeast breads like focaccia, roasted potatoes, poultry rub, and rosemary butter for vegetables (the cuttings are on the right side of the bowl).
This year as you add annuals and flowers to your garden beds, don’t forget to invest in perennial herbs for year round flavor.
Peggy Riccio is the owner of pegplant.com, an online resource for gardening in the Washington, DC, metro area; president of the Potomac Unit, Herb Society of America; regional director of GardenComm, a professional association of garden communicators; and is the blog administrator for the National Garden Clubs, Inc.
Have you ever said to yourself or others, “My garden is my therapy?” If you have noticed that you feel more relaxed and even rejuvenated after imbibing the beauty, fragrance, and even hard work in your garden, you are not alone! Gardening provides physical exercise, as well as a rewarding intellectual and emotional connection. When recognized on a personal level, it is not a stretch to see how people in a wide variety of care environments who are facing diverse personal challenges can benefit from professionally facilitated horticultural experiences as well.
The profession of horticultural therapy (HT) was formalized in the early 1970s, though people have sought out gardens and gardening activities for respite and health recovery well before then. The practice of horticultural therapy involves a plant-based activity, a horticultural therapist, client(s), and identified treatment goals and objectives. Either in a group or as individuals, clients participate in outdoor or indoor plant-based activities designed to address their particular health or wellness needs. For example, patients in a rehabilitation hospital can work on standing tolerance, dynamic balance, and coordination by transplanting tea herbs into a planter raised to a comfortable standing height. Later in the season, the patients are rewarded with familiar fragrances as they harvest the herbs to make herb teas and learn about the roles relaxation and stress management play in their recovery.
In another example, adults with brain injuries focus on pre-vocational skills, such as following increasingly complex directions, organizing their work space, and social skills needed for interacting appropriately with coworkers and supervisors, all while growing plants for a sale. They could be growing any plants for sale, but the sensory stimulation from herb plants increases motivation and inspires conversation with customers during the plant sale. I have noticed that HT sessions are often so enjoyable, even with focus and hard work, that participants can feel like they are taking a break from therapy. Yet, they realized real progress towards their goals and objectives. 
HT programs are found in diverse organizations addressing a wide range of physical, social, emotional, vocational, and wellness needs for people of all ages. I’ve always said, “If you have seen one horticultural therapy program, you have seen ONE horticultural therapy program!” The flexibility of this field means that programs are unique and creatively designed to fit lots of different organizations–and not all are health care. Most focus on some type of improvement, recovery, or function maintenance ultimately for improved independence and quality of life. Quite often, horticultural therapists co-treat with other clinicians, such as recreation or occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, social workers, and vocational rehabilitation counselors. 
The other by-product of horticultural therapy programs is an environment with lots of plants! Imagine the impact plants have on senior living facilities, psychiatric hospitals, correction and juvenile detention facilities, veterans hospitals, and community support programs for people coping with grief, chronic illness, or cancer. When walking by a “lemon” garden, filled with lemon verbena, lemongrass, lemon basil, lemon thyme, lemon 
Editor’s Note: This article was originally posted March 9, 2018. We hope it inspires you as you plan your spring gardens!
No room to garden? Not a problem. Find a large container and plant your herbs or vegetables in that. Many nurseries make that easy by selling herbs and vegetables already growing in large containers. There is something uniquely satisfying about picking vegetables and herbs that you have grown yourself.
Ginger, 
Ginger is a very old spice. The Indians and the Chinese used ginger as a medicine over 5000 years ago to treat a variety of ailments (Bode, 2011). It was also used to flavor foods long before history was even recorded. The Greeks and the Romans introduced ginger to Europe and the Mediterranean area by way of the Arab traders. It became an important spice in Europe until the fall of the Roman Empire. When the Arabs re-established trade routes after the fall, ginger found its way back into European apothecaries and kitchens. It is said that one pound of ginger cost the same as one sheep in the 13th and 14
Today, growing culinary ginger is not limited to the hot, humid areas of Southeast Asia and India as it was long ago. Anyone living in southern growing areas (USDA Hardiness Zones 8 – 12) can grow it as a perennial. In colder areas, it can be grown in pots and brought indoors for the winter or grown in the ground, but dug up before frost and potted up for overwintering indoors in a cool location. It prefers a rich, moist soil, good drainage, and shade in the south, but full sun in the north. If starting plants from store-bought ginger rhizomes, the rhizome should be first soaked in water to remove any growth retardant that may have been used. Each rhizome can be cut into sections with at least two eyes and planted in soil. Harvest the rhizomes when the leaves begin to fade. 
using ginger in some form: fresh, ground, crystallized, pickled, preserved, or dried. 
Unfortunately for ginger, there is a dark side to its history. 
Olbrich Botanical Gardens is a 16-acre, free admission public garden in Madison, Wisconsin, in the heart of the ancestral lands of the Ho-Chunk people. The Ho-Chunk, or “People of the Sacred Voice” historically lived in southern Wisconsin, from the far southwestern corner of the state along the Mississippi River nearly up to Green Bay. This is fertile land with rolling hills and scenic bluffs where the Ho-Chunk lived in permanent villages. In fact, their oral tradition simply states, “We have always been here.” 
Especially in Olbrich’s Herb Garden, it’s vitally important that we grow, show, and interpret plants that all types of people identify with. Herb lovers know that edible plants can act as a universal language, uniting people and making them feel at home across cultural borders. In this spirit, the Herb Garden has hosted many creative collaborative gardens over the years. Most recently, an Indian-style garden created with owners of an Ayurvedic spa oozed tropical flair with ginger and turmeric, eggplant, bitter melon, and elephant ears. 
We also wanted to highlight the endangered Ho-Chunk language, since there are only 200 fluent speakers and only 50 are the older people who grew up speaking Ho-Chunk. At Olbrich, we are lucky to have on our staff Rita Peters, a 24-year-old college student of Ho-Chunk and Menomonee descent. Rita, known as Xoropasaignga (hodo-pa-SIGN-ga) or Bald Eagle Woman, is at the heart of the Indigenous Garden. She does everything from sowing seeds and harvesting sweetgrass to developing events and educational seminars. Rita worked with her aunt, a language apprentice, to create bilingual signage that even links to a YouTube recording of the words being spoken aloud. 
As winter approached, we carefully saved seeds for the Indigenous Garden in 2022. Our milkweed soup day in early June attracted more than 330 guests! This year we are extending the Garden’s reach by collaborating with Ho-Chunk Gaming Madison, the biggest employer of Indigenous people in our area. We hope that partnerships like these will create an ever-growing network as Olbrich continues to focus our efforts on ensuring that everyone feels at home in these beautiful gardens here in Dejope. 
Use equal parts of water or broth and milkweed flower buds. You can add other vegetables (green beans, corn, carrots) or ham/bacon. Bring broth to a boil and add milkweed or other veggies. Simmer for 30-40 minutes until milkweed and veggies are tender.
Mentha 
Double mint is the only mint that has both peppermint and spearmint oils, which gives it a very unique flavor and pleasant fragrance. This mint is also called red-stemmed apple mint. It is a hybrid between 
You may wonder if there is any connection between Wrigley’s Doublemint® gum and the double mint herb. The exact ingredients of the gum are a Wrigley’s trade secret. However, the company does disclose that the main ingredient of the gum is peppermint; and on its packaging, it displays two peppermint leaves, side by side. So, I don’t believe there is a connection between the double mint herb, 
As a Virginia home gardener and herb enthusiast, I grow many of my culinary herbs from seed at the beginning of the summer and I purchase a few tropicals. I have my staples, simple names such as pineapple sage, lemongrass, lemon verbena, basil, dill, cilantro, and parsley. Of course, the garden is littered with the perennials: sage, lavender, rosemary, oregano, knot marjoram, thyme, germander, yarrow, chives, and lovage. All of them have stories; their useful properties have been known for generations.
Some of the well-known stories involve better rosemary plants. The cold-hardy ‘Arp’ cultivar was discovered by Madalene Hill, who managed Hilltop Herb Farm in Texas. While visiting family in Arp, Texas, she noticed a robust rosemary plant blooming in January and took cuttings. Years later, Cyrus Hyde, owner of New Jersey herb nursery Well-Sweep Herb Farm, noticed a sport, a naturally occurring mutation, on one of his ‘Arp’ plants. He propagated the sport, which was more compact with greener foliage, and named it ‘Madelene Hill’. Today, ‘Arp’ and ‘Madelene Hill’, also known as ‘Hill Hardy’, are some of the most cold hardy rosemary plants on the market. 
Jim Westerfield, owner of an Illinois bed and breakfast, was an amateur breeder who loved mints. By cross pollinating mint varieties, he produced more than 50 hybrids with interesting names and flavors such as ‘Iced Hazelnut’,‘Jessie’s Sweet Pear’,‘Marshmallow Mint’, and ‘Cotton Candy’. It took Jim seven years to produce one of the only patented mints, ‘Hillary’s Sweet Lemon Mint’, named after Hillary Rodham Clinton. His mints live on through trademarks and patents and are only available at Richters in Canada and Fragrant Fields in Missouri. 
Now, instead of serendipity playing a role, companies are intentionally breeding for “better” traits. Driving this is consumer demand of course, but in the world of culinary herbs, consumers can be just about anyone from field growers, hydroponic growers, grocery stores, nurseries, seed companies, gardeners, and non-gardeners who just want to buy a fresh basil plant for the kitchen counter. I talked with many seed companies, university researchers, and growers to learn what traits they were interested in and why. I learned who was focusing on certain herbs, which herbs have a lot of possibilities for our market, and new herb cultivars that will be available to the public. Join me in this behind-the-scenes look at efforts to improve your herb garden as well as expand your staples of plants. 
Basil,
Although named by the Greeks, basil originated in India 5,000 years ago. In India today, the herb is considered a sacred herb. Holy basil, 
From India, basil spread to Egypt, where the herb was used for embalming and has been found buried with the pharaohs. The herb then moved on to Rome and southern Europe, where the Romans fell in love with it. In Italy, basil was considered a sign of love. If young girls were seeking a suitor, they would place a pot of basil on their windowsill. If a potential suitor showed up with a sprig of basil, the girl would love him forever. 
Italy became the home of pesto, which basil has made famous. “Pesto was created by the people of Genoa to highlight the flavor of their famous basil. Using a mortar and pestle, they combined simple ingredients to make one of the world’s most famous pasta sauces” (Blackman, 2010). The simple sauce contains only basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and parmigiano-reggiano cheese. Pesto is still a very popular sauce for pasta or crackers, especially in the summer, when fresh basil is plentiful.
Basil, a sun-loving member of the mint family, is an annual herb that thrives in summer heat. In fact, it will languish if planted in the garden before temperatures reach a consistent 70 plus degrees. Frequent harvesting of the leaves before flowers appear prolongs its growing season. It can be propagated by seed or cuttings. However, it is very susceptible to downy mildew, which researchers are constantly trying to overcome by breeding more disease-resistant varieties. The new gene editing CRISPR technology may show a promising solution to this problem (Riccio, 2022).
Basil is not usually considered a medicinal herb, but it was used medicinally in the time of Hippocrates who prescribed it as a tonic for the heart and to treat vomiting and constipation. Pliny the Elder commented that it was good for lethargy and fainting spells, headaches, flatulence, and other digestive issues (Pliny, 1855). China and India have a long history of using basil as a medicinal herb as well.
So, do enjoy fresh basil this summer. Remember to dry some for the winter, freeze the leaves, or combine chopped leaves with water and freeze in an ice cube tray for later use. However, you should take careful consideration before putting basil on your windowsill lest you attract an unwanted suitor.
Visitors to the West Highlands admire so much our woods and mountains, especially when the heather spreads its bright purple mantle of flowers, but how many ever stop to think of the numerous delicious wines which can be made from our shrubs and trees, their flowers, their berries and leaves.
A shrub, usually thought of as a weed, which grows in the West Highlands by roadsides, hillside and lochside, and never seems to be out of flower, is the Gorse, Furze or Whin. It is so prickly that no animal will eat it, but its golden yellow flowers make a rich, rather heavy-bodied wine which is also very intoxicating. It must be given at least a year to mature and is worth waiting for. Its flavour is most unusual, a hint of almond with a touch of scent of the flowers.
It was like stepping back in time one century. Birch wine was a favourite wine of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and throughout the years of her long reign large quantities had to be made at Balmoral every year. The time for tapping the Birch trees is when the leaf buds are swollen ready to open, usually early March. Having decided on the trees, you then get pieces of young Elder wood about four inches long, and scrape out the soft white pithy core leaving a hollow tube. Next take a brace with a bit, and bore a hole in the trunk of the Birch tree 18 inches from the ground, to allow the hollow posset of Elder wood to fit in firmly. When boring the Birch tree, as soon as the clear sap shows, stop, fit the posset and fix a clean, dry, sterilized bottle under the posset. The sap runs freely into the bottle, and whenever the bottle is full it must be securely corked. As many trees as possible should be tapped each day to give at least one gallon of sap, which is the best quantity to make at a time. The sap is clear and sparkling. If any hint of colour shows in the sap drawn off, discard it. One thing to remember, if the leaf buds have opened do not tap the tree; the sap will be slow to run as well as unsuitable for wine. It is certainly fascinating and challenging, waiting for just the right moment. When the possets are removed from the Birch trees, carefully fill up the holes with pieces of wood or resin and seal over with any form of wax to exclude all airborne diseases.
The wine is made by boiling one gallon of sap with three and a half pounds of best sugar and the rind and juice of two lemons for about one hour. Strain into a jug or basin large enough to hold this quantity. When tepid add yeast, leave covered for four days, when the ferment will have caused a heavy scum to rise which must be carefully removed. Strain into a storage jar fitted with fermentation trap. In a month to six weeks the wine will have cleared. Decant into another storage jar and leave for one year. It is the home-made wine most nearly like Vodka and was a favourite in Scandinavian countries and Russia.
I have not given quantity of yeast as there are different yeasts available specially for wine makers. In all the very old recipes which stated “spread one ounce of yeast on a slice of toast and add to the liquor,” I found this always far too much and used only a small teaspoonful to a gallon.
vanilla. A glass of it sipped at bedtime was believed to induce natural health-giving sleep.
Another move means another new time for figuring out what conditions herbs will like. It seems to me it’s never the same. I’m always learning about sun, soil, and specifics to please them. For instance, we moved to a new apartment in December from full-almost-too-much sun to very little light, and I wrote off the herbs’ survival when we moved. I went out this morning to clean up the porch, toss the debris, and see just how much work there was to be done before my annual after-Easter shop. Instead of finding dead plants, the Italian parsley in one container and the curly leaf in another have been very happy, filling up their porch pots with gay abandon, the Italian parsley even bolting and seeding. Apparently, they liked the neglect, the freezes, the lack of sun and the dreary winter. Or maybe the indirect sun from facing North is not all bad? 
Top on my list are fennel, lemon balm, sage, oregano, rosemary, and as many kinds of thyme and basil as I can get. Cilantro would be a good addition, too, maybe even keeping up with the parsley and self-seeding. Truth be told, I enjoy coriander seeds more than I do their herb, cilantro, itself. So, too, I have enjoyed fennel over the years and favor it rather than its look-alike, dill. It seems to me to be the ideal plant, always yielding something, whether fronds for chopping, seeds for grinding, or stems for salads, and stem and fronds for poaching fish. They were the only herbs happy all year round in front of my restaurant in Social Circle, Georgia, in 1970 and beyond, reproducing wildly, tall and stately, their arms stretched out with spokes and seeds. Whatever I did, it was making the fennel happy. It was the catalyst for many of my recipes, including Fennel Bread, a favorite. The chances of replicating my former restaurant garden’s abundance now is pretty low, since it is a pot garden, but I’ll be happy with enough variety of herbs to cook all year long and some seeds to store for later use. And the kitty will be pleased with some catnip, assuming I plant it high enough so she doesn’t sit in it first thing, unknowingly destroying it like she did last year. 
Chances are there won’t be enough room to please us both with all we want, but we’ll be happy with what herbs we can get provided kitty and I can each have a place to sit in a patch of sun with a few birds to sing to us.
Known as the “Queen of Southern Cooking,” Nathalie Dupree is a best-selling author of 15 cookbooks and her wisdom and recipes have been featured in Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, Southern Living, Coastal Living, Better Homes and Garden, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping. A beloved and respected teacher, she has appeared in more than 300 television shows on The Food Network, PBS, and The Learning Channel. She won James Beard Awards for “Southern Memories” and “Comfortable Entertaining,” as well as her most recent book, “Nathalie Dupree’s Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking.” She was also honored with the prestigious “Grand Dame” of Les Dames d’Escoffier.
The Herb Society of America Blog 