Herb Gardens

Above: Miner’s Lettuce

‘Speak not - whisper not;
Here blowest thyme and bergamot;
Softly on the evening hour,
Sweet herbs in their spices shower.’
- Walter de la Mare, The Sunken Garden, 1917

In addition to growing a variety of herbs and spices in your own garden, you may want to try wild crafting some of the more abundantly available herbs such as purslane, dandelion and chicory. I have purslane growing as a weed all over my garden pathways. I had to purchase seeds from a garden center to establish my patches of perennial dandelion and chicory. When collecting herbs in the wild make sure you know what you are picking, do not harvest any herb if you are uncertain of its identification.

I have three empty lots surrounding my property that produce a variety of weeds such as purslane that I can harvest on a continual basis. This type of plant collecting is sometimes referred to as wild crafting. Use common sense when collecting herbs in the wild. Make sure you have the permission of the land owner, make sure the herbs have not been sprayed with any harmful chemicals or pesticides and make sure the location you are collecting from is away from the contamination of car and vehicle exhaust fumes.

Also, make sure you know the exact identification of the material you are collecting, consult a good field guide on wild plants to make sure of your identification. And finally, many of the more popular herbs such as ginseng, golden seal, trillium and echinacea have been over harvested in recent years. I never harvest any of these endangered species from the wild. I either grow my own, as in the case of echinacea, or I purchase the harvested herb or herbal product from a reputable company that grows their own product and does not harvest from the wild.

Wild Crafting Bookshelf

1. Edible Wild Plants. Peterson Field Guides. Houghton Mifflin Co.
2. Guide to Edible Weeds. James A. Duke. Random House, 1999.
3. Handbook of Edible Weeds. James A. Duke. CRC Press, 2001.
4. Hurley, Judith Benn. The Good Herb; Recipes and Remedies from Nature. William Morrow, 1995.

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