• Home
  • Features
  • Talks
  • Learn with me

Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: herbs

Garden words: Purely for medicinal purposes

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by sallynex in book review, garden words, herbs, self sufficiency

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

book review, herbal, herbal medicine, herbs, Kew

The Gardener’s Companion to Medicinal Plants
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Confession time: I do like to self-medicate.

Not, I must hastily add, in the alcoholic sense (well, not very often and only in extremis). But in the reach out into the garden and grab your remedy of choice sort of sense.

Herbal medicines can be as simple as a sprig of peppermint dunked in a mug of boiling water to ease your indigestion after an overindulgent meal: tastier than a Rennies, and at least you know exactly what’s gone into it.

Or you can go the whole hog and start boiling up comfrey roots into a sticky paste to smear over gauze in a poultice: wrap it around a sprain and it’ll ease pain and reduce swelling. Not for nothing is comfrey commonly known as knitbone.

I use sage tea to soothe a sore throat; I try to drink a rosemary tisane at about elevenish to aid my failing memory (the redoubtable Jekka McVicar swears by this one). There’s an aloe vera plant on my kitchen windowsill in case anyone should burn themselves; and I’ll pick a leaf of feverfew in the herb garden to slip into a cheese sandwich (just a little as it’s quite bitter) to ease the pain of headaches, including migraines, which my youngest occasionally suffers from. There are loads more: in fact there’s a whole chapter on the subject, including recipes, in my new book (in all good bookshops from September 7th!)

But I wish I’d had this book on my shelf to refer to while I was writing it. My knowledge on herbal medicine tends to be a bit piecemeal, handed down from friends and relatives or snippets picked up from books and magazines. So I’m not all that adventurous, really: I stick to my known remedies and go to the doctor for the rest.

This book, though, gathers all those scraps of herbal lore into one beautiful tome, along with a whole load of other remedies I never even knew existed. Who knew you could brew hawthorn berries into a spicy wine to help with poor circulation? Or that squash leaves are anti-inflammatories – you can rub the sap on burns, apparently. Elderberries prevent colds from taking hold – take a teaspoon of elderberry-infused vinegar three times a day at the first signs of a cold and you’ll head off the worst. And chickweed, of all things, can help soothe eczema.

I particularly like the considered, measured approach to the subject. This is no flag-waving sales pitch for the benefits of herbal medicine: it’s an impartial assessment of the potential uses for each plant and – best of all – the scientific basis (if any) for its effectiveness.

So let’s take hops, for example: I’m familiar with them as a sedative, usually the dried flowers slipped into a pillowcase to help you sleep. That use is listed here (along with others including mixing it with poppy seeds to treat bruises and boils); but there’s also an analysis of the evidence. There are few clinical trials (yet) which support its usefulness for treating restlessness and anxiety; but solid evidence confirming that the essential oils are antibacterial.

A balanced view is a rare thing in the field of herbal medicine, so this alone would have earned this book a place on my “essential reading” shelf. But it’s also packed with recipes and instructions – everything from rosehip syrup to calendula lip balm and passionflower tea (it helps you sleep). And all in a book which is a useful size – a tad larger than A5, so you can hold it in one hand quite comfortably while stirring the chickweed cream with the other. And I haven’t even mentioned yet the exquisite illustrations lifted mainly from Kew’s archives of botanical art. My one and only criticism of this otherwise thoughtfully compiled book is that there is no detailed list of who painted these beautiful works of art; credit where credit is due, after all.

But overall this is one of the best books to land on my desk in ages, and one which I can already see I shall be thumbing through again and again. In short – an essential reference work for anyone who has even a passing interest in picking their medicines from the garden. I will treasure my copy for years to come.

Herby adventures

10 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by sallynex in container growing, herbs, videos

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

container growing, herbs, herbs in containers

I have been planting herbs. More to the point, I have been experimenting with herb containers: a gardening marriage made in heaven if ever there was one, as herbs like it dry and hot, and conditions in containers are generally…. dry and hot. And you can put your herb container right outside your back door so all you have to do when you want something for your cooking is open the door, reach out and… voila! You don’t even have to put your shoes on.

Anyway, I made a video of it (in which you also get to glimpse my house and bits of the extremely woolly garden too). Here you go – courtesy of the crocus.co.uk Youtube Channel. Enjoy!

A pocket full of posies

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by sallynex in cutting garden, herbs

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cut flowers, flower arranging, flowers, herbs, history, nosegays, posies, scent, tussie-mussies

tussiemussie1On the whole, I’m a pretty rugged sort of person. A disproportionate amount of my gardening time seems to be spent hammering scaffold boards together, or powering my way through waist high weeds at the business end of a petrol strimmer, or hauling improbably deep tree roots out of pits in the ground.

But the anti-bramble gauntlets, steel toecapped boots and safety helmet hide a more delicate soul. The soul of a person who likes tussie-mussies.

I love the word tussie-mussie. I always think of it as an Americanism: their version of our more prosaic nosegay (bit prim, that) or posy. But the Americans came to tussie-mussies late, around two centuries late in fact, when New England ladies took to carrying them on their way to church. The word was first coined in 15th century England, long before we even knew there was an America (there is an excellent rundown of its meanings, including one rather surprising one I won’t mention here as it’s a family-friendly blog, here). [read more…]

As seen at Chelsea: Good ideas

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

achocha, caigua, garlic, herbs, ornamental strawberries, pallets, paper pots, raised beds, recycling, society garlic, strawberries, training fruit, tulbaghia violacea, upcycling

As the bulldozers rumble in and we leave Chelsea for another year (pause for a muffled sob into my hanky): a gallop around some of the many, many little flashes of inspiration I spotted this year.

There’s always something that gives you that ‘ooh-must-try-that’ feeling; and of course particularly perfect demonstrations of some technique I’ve heard about before but never really seen in practice.

So here’s my round-up of things which caught my eye at this year’s show for bringing that touch of Chelsea bling to your veg garden.     [Read more…]

Gardening in smellovision

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by sallynex in garden design

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

herbs, perfume, pot pourri, roses, scent, scent in the garden, scented-leaved pelargoniums

scent_geranium

Scented leaf geraniums: only perfumed when crushed

I am having a bit of a dilemma.

I’m in the middle of that bit of the year in which I realise (and this happens every single year) that my ambitions are slightly outstripping my ability to turn them into reality.

It’s all going quite well in the workaday veg garden bit: an impending deadline helped get the potager-style fruit garden finished (it remains the only ‘finished’ or even ‘started’ area of my garden), and now I’m in the middle of extending and redesigning the veg-growing bit to look, I hope, the way I’d always dreamed it would.

But there’s an area around where we usually have barbecues which is currently a bit of a weed-strangled jungle, bar the half of it I keep cultivated mainly in order to grow those plants I acquire at random: they’re quite nice, but not exactly coherent at the moment.

This is what I call my ‘pot pourri’ garden. Not because it’s a mishmash, though in its current state you’d be forgiven for thinking that; more because I decided in my initial plan that I’d grow all the ingredients I’d need to make my own pot-pourri there. This, I reasoned, would mean lots of lovely scented things and would also mean I could have fun experimenting with making my own ground orris root and such like.

winterhoneysuckle

Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima)

It’s quite a large area: and a good thing too, as my list of pot pourri ingredients is increasing the more I look into this. A few Apothecary’s roses, some Iris germanica (that’s the orris root), lavender, rosemary and sweet marjoram; oodles of bergamot, chamomile and clove carnations; big boys like eucalyptus (coppiced), jasmine and honeysuckle; and little beauties like mignonette, violets, scented-leaved geraniums and tansy.

But my dilemma is with the scent. Or rather, scents: doesn’t the bergamot clash with the roses? And if you’ve got honeysuckle pumping out the perfume, doesn’t it rather interfere with the sweetness of eau de jasmine?

You can, of course, pace your scented plants so they’re not all performing at once. The spiciness of a wallflower is over well before the richness of roses pervades the air; essential oils of sage and rosemary are released only on a hot summer’s day, so shouldn’t interfere with the more delicate spring scent of violets. And some, like honeysuckle and nicotiana, only rev up when the sun goes down, considerately leaving daytime hours to roses and carnations.

But what happens when you’ve got a powerful scent near a scent that’s delicate? Or – possibly worse – two powerful scents at once?

Then you get clashing scents, or a jumble of scents which are indistinguishable one from the other – and I’m not sure I like the sound of that.

There’s very little written about this particular consideration when you’re gardening with scent: on the whole, the advice seems to be, pack in as much of it as you possibly can. Even the trustiest books in my gardening library are no help here: they go on about not forgetting to include the ‘extra’ element of scent, but forget to tell us how.

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’

In my experience there are different scent effects for each scented plant (and I’m not just talking about the type of perfume). Some scents fill a garden when they’re at full throttle: the kind you walk out into your garden one day and think, ‘What is that?’ Christmas box, most of the daphnes, philadelphus on a sunny day and climbers like honeysuckle and jasmine do that for me.

Others stay put, occupying the small area around the particular shrub or plant so you only really experience it when you’re right next to it. Roses, mignonette, wallflowers and my lovely stately Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’.

Then there’s a third category: the ones you have to crush a leaf, or tread on, or otherwise damage for its occasional – and usually powerful – puff of fragrance. This includes most of the scented-foliage plants: herbs such as lemon verbena, lemonbalm, chamomile, bergamot, eucalyptus and scented-leaf geraniums.

So I’m going to work on that basis. The strong scents I shall use with caution: I’ll think hard whether I want them at all (jasmine in particular is a real thug when it gets going) and spread them out where I can: winter honeysuckle not summer, perhaps.

I shall make sure I don’t plant any of the second category next to any from the first. And the third lot I think I can probably get away with sprinkling with gay abandon through the whole thing.

But since I’ve never tried planting a garden based on scent before, I may be entirely wrong. This, I have a feeling, may turn out to be something of an experiment, as all the best gardening tends to be. Let’s hope it doesn’t end in a terminal case of olfactory overload.

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006

Categories

  • book review
  • chicken garden
  • children gardening
  • climate change
  • container growing
  • cutting garden
  • design
  • education
  • end of month view
  • exotic edibles
  • France
  • Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
  • garden design
  • garden history
  • garden words
  • gardening without plastic
  • Gardens of Somerset
  • giveaways
  • greenhouse
  • herbs
  • kitchen garden
  • landscaping
  • my garden
  • new plants
  • new veg garden
  • news
  • overseas gardens
  • Painting Paradise
  • pick of the month
  • plant of the month
  • pond
  • poultry
  • pruning
  • recipes
  • seeds
  • self sufficiency
  • sheep
  • shows
  • sustainability
  • this month in the garden
  • Uncategorized
  • unusual plants
  • videos
  • walk on the wild side
  • wildlife gardening
  • wordless wednesday

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy