A Garden of Herbs

NOWADAYS every one who writes a book, especially a
small book, offers an apology for doing so. But this book
is so unpretentious that an apology for writing it would be
absurd. There is an immense wealth of literature, both
learned and charming, on the subject of herbs, but there is
no small practical handbook for those who are going to
create an old-fashioned herb garden, and who want to know
how to use these herbs as our great-grandmothers did. The
fashion for “blue,” grey,” white or Japanese gardens has died out; the rock garden still fascinates, but, unless made and maintained by skillful hands, it is apt to look ridiculous, so let us hope that the herb garden is to be restored to its former pride of place.

Even those of us with the smallest suburban plots can make a delightful herb garden, and no matter how tiny it is a perpetual joy. Herbs ask so little and they give so much. All that the majority of our common herbs want is a fairly poor soil (the poorer the better for the aromatic herbs) and plenty of sunlight.

People who know nothing of herbs imagine that it might be a dull garden consisting of only foliage plants. But there is no blue more beautiful than that of borage, whilst valerian, mallows, marigold and the stately mullein (to mention only a few examples) make lovely splashes of color. There need be no limit to the size of the garden, for, as one eminent herbalist tells us, there are on an average about seven hundred different remedies for most of the common ailments, but it is undoubtedly the moderate-sized garden which is the most attractive.

This little book only deals with the few well-known English wild and garden herbs which everyone can grow and use.

No mention is made of the purely medicinal uses of herbs, the receipts being merely for the excellent old herbal teas, the syrups and conserves, the herbal drinks and home-made wines, the candied flowers and leaves, the sweet waters, washing-balls, pomanders, etc., which our great-grandmothers were so skillful in preparing.

I have included just a few recipes, which are, alas, of no use, in our sadly unimaginative age! One of these will be found under the heading ” Thyme” : “To enable one to see the Fairies,” and I can only trust it will not fall under the eye of any severely, practical person, but as William Coles says of some of the things in his Art of Sampling: “if there be any that are not true yet they are pleasant.”

” The worship of Demeter belongs to that older religion, nearer to the Earth, which some have thought they could discern behind the more definitely national mythology of Homer. She is the goddess of dark caves. . . . She knows the magic power of certain plants cut from her bosom to bane or bless . . . She is the goddess of the fertility of the earth in its wildness.” WALTER PATER.

” Talke of perfect happiness or pleasure and what place “^
was so fit for that as the garden place where Adam was set I
to be the Herbalist.” JOHN GERARD.

“All the wide world of vegetation blooms and buds for
you; the thorn and the thistle which the earth casts forth.
as evil are to you the kindliest servants ; no dying petal nor
drooping tendril is so feeble as to have no help for you.”
JOHN RUSKIN.

” Then there are some flowers, they always seem to me like over-dutiful children: tend them never so little and they come up and flourish and show as I may say their bright and happy faces to you.” DOUGLAS JERROLD.

*’ Death, thou’rt a cordial old and rare: Look how compounded, with what care, Time got his wrinkles reaping thee, Sweet herbs from all antiquity.” LANIER.

” A GARDEN of herbs, a vineyard, a garden enclosed all these have the gravity of use and labor, and are as remote as memory, and as familiar, secluded and secret.” But what do we know of herb gardens? for we use so few herbs, and those we have relegated to an obscure corner of the kitchen garden.

It is a little difficult even to imagine a time when ” vegetables” occupied only an insignificant part of the herb garden, and a still earlier time when both the flower garden and the vegetable garden were nonexistent, and the herb garden reigned supreme.

We know from the greatest authority l on the history of gardening that even in Tudor days only very wealthy men had separate gardens merely for pleasure, whilst all the small manors and farm-houses throughout the country still retained the old herb garden.

For over seven centuries before that time, all the gardens in England were herb gardens, and very beautiful they must have been, for roses, lilies, gillyflowers, lavender, rosemary, fennel, poppies, marigolds, honeysuckle, periwinkles, peonies and violets were all used as herbs.

Our ancestors ate such enormous quantities of meat, that for “
vegetables,” as we understand them, they would have had very little use, and what they needed in large quantities were all sorts of herbs, for stuffings and stewing’s, for decorations, for perfume and for medicine.

Indeed, ” vegetables” are quite newcomers in England. They declined in favor throughout Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire, and though they were reintroduced after the Renaissance, they were not in common use till at least a hundred years later.

We were far behind our continental Neighbours in our knowledge of them, and vegetables which figured in the old Roman menus were considered luxuries in this country in the days of the later Stuarts.

Though potatoes were introduced into England in Elizabeth’s reign, they were not grown to any extent, and the working people did not eat them for another two hundred years. Gilbert White, writing late in the eighteenth century, says of them: “They have prevailed by means of premiums within these twenty years only, and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarcely have ventured to taste them in the last reign/’

Of Jerusalem artichokes we knew nothing till we learnt about them from the Red Indians; and they were only introduced into England in Tudor days. It was about the same time that French beans were first cultivated in this country, but scarlet runners were unknown till Stuart times.

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Warmest Regards,

Coyalita Linville

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