by Elizabeth Shaheen
Herbs are indispensable in the garden, for they have a place in every part of it. Only too frequently, we are advised to grow our herbs near to the kitchen for convenience sake. Well yes, you can do this, but why not also disperse them throughout your garden plantings, for they serve as border perennials, groundcover, foundation plants or annuals.
Imagine the joy you will gain as you work or stroll in the garden and gently stroke the stem of leaves of a fragrant herb and automatically whiff your herb-scented hand – such simple pleasures of life.
Herbs garden merit is as diverse as their traditional culinary and medicinal virtues. Herbs are marvellously sensuous plants, their flavours and scents very often take us back to happy childhood memories of our mother and grandmother’s use of herbs in the garden, kitchen and remedies for family ailments.
Herbs not only hold culinary and medicinal virtues, but their delicate flowers and alluring shapes and textures make them among the most beautiful plants we can grow and provide exquisite additions to the ornamental garden. So far, what I have described is how most people perceive a herb: a fairly small, leafy, pretty aromatic plant.
To define what a herb is, is almost impossible and its definition has changed throughout time, which in itself reflects the changing bond we have with the plant kingdom.
Traditionally, a herb is a plant with a medicinal, a culinary or a domestic use, or a plant regarded for its scent. From ancient times, herbs have played a vital role in the healing traditions of many cultures. In medieval Europe, the highly esteemed physician Galen, whose anatomical works formed the basis for medical teaching well into the 18th century, wrote extensively about the four ‘humours’ – blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile – and classified herbs by their essential qualities: as hot or cold, dry or damp. Seventeenth century Arab physicians, such as Avicenna, developed these theories and today Galenical theories continue to dominate Unani medicine, practised in the Muslim world and India.
In addition, European herbalists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance included in their directory of herbs hollyhocks, pinks, aquilegias and many other plants that we may perceive as cottage garden ornamentals.
For the Japanese and Chinese, daylilies and hostas hold both medicinal and culinary attributes. Australian native trees such as Eucalyptus and Melaleuca alternifolia possess antiseptic curative qualities and they are therefore considered herbs.
As is our Bahrain-grown Vitex agnus-castus, the beautiful chaste tree, native to southern Europe and central and western Asia. Its berries provide a hormone regulator and taken as a tincture, it targets the pituitary gland to stimulate and normalise hormone production. Even some species of orchids hold medicinal powers and form part of the oriental diet.
Therefore one gardener’s joy at seeing the buds form on a beloved Lonicera japonica (honeysuckle) is another’s, in China, cure for fever, where the flowers are used in jin yin hua to clear the toxins or ‘fire poisons’.
Shrubby herbs offer a perpetual charisma to any garden design. They form a background to smaller plants and fill-out distances between the trunks of trees, those ever-important framework plants, the soul of all gardens. Shrubby herbs require only the occasional pruning or clipping to maintain a tidy-look.
Groundcover herbs spread their glory and frequently need to be kept in check, for they frequently have a habit of running away with themselves. They are, however, invaluable for covering large areas and provide an added bonus of keeping weeds down and cooling the earth around more delicate plants.
Climbing herbals also have an essential role to play in the overall scheme. They arrest the eye, irrespective of how they are grown: may it be through a shrub, left to meander or race up a tree, supported by a post or trained against a wall.
Their display may be brash or refined, untamed and wild, or with a pedigree and therefore the latest sought-after enchantress.
Climbers in their natural habitat mingle with their neighbours and as such, they face competition for nutrients from their hosts, but they benefit from the cool, leafy soil and shade from scorching sun that the canopy affords. Cool roots and head in the sun is a sound rule of thumb when deciding where to plant your climbers. Trees are essential to all gardens. A treeless garden is devoid, in my view, of a soul.
A classic example of a herbal tree growing in Bahrain is the Neem tree, Azadirachta indica. However, this ‘village pharmacy’ can attain heights of 50 feet or more, with an open spreading crown and is therefore not a tree for small gardens.
A wonderful choice would be Cassia fistula. or perhaps it is more familiar by its common names: the pudding pipe tree, Indian laburnum or the golden shower, for it showers fountains of racemes of sun-yellow, cup-shaped flowers, reminiscent of large bunches of hanging grapes.
In India, the bark is used for its tannin. Its cylindrical, two-foot-long pods yield a pulp used as a laxative. This tree of glory is available from some of Bahrain’s garden nurseries.
Since the times of the European explorers, plants have been removed from their native lands and successfully planted in foreign soil, continuously demonstrating their willingness to adapt. Therefore, the herb kingdom offers us a fascinatingly varied palette with which to paint our garden scene and an immense means for experiment, which is part of the fun, despite it frustrations, of gardening.
Next week I shall talk about some annual and perennial herbs you can sow in autumn. Some of the garden nurseries and supermarkets offer a selection of herb seeds.
Elizabeth Shaheen – GDN – 24 Sept, 2006