Puzzle lovers, here is a riddle for you: What herb is widely believed to have originated in ancient Persia yet has been found as a 32 million year old fossil in Colorado, has been carefully cultivated in gardens for over 16 thousand years for it’s religious, medicinal and culinary uses, is grown in all parts of the temperate world, produces a fruit that has 25% more vitamin C then most citrus, is used around the world in cosmetics and fragrance products, is one of the most widely grown plants on earth, produces an essential oil worth over $300.00 an ounce, is the backbone of the internation

Once upon a time New England gardens, fields and woods were full of hummingbirds, bees and butterflies doing what they do best, flitting from flower to flower sipping, lapping and pollinating. That isn’t true today. In the past few years a perfect storm of pesticides, air pollution, weather events and plant hybridization have swirled together to create conditions that are seriously damaging pollinator populations. Honey bee colonies across the country are collapsing, butterfly populations are declining and

Did you know that horseradish is an herb and that more horseradish is grown in the United States then anywhere else in the world? Both are true!
Each year the International Herb Association (www.iherb.org) picks an herb to celebrate. This year the honor of Herb of the Year goes to the grated root you find packed in little bottles on a supermarket shelf somewhere near the hot dogs, horseradish.

“...the river runs, the round world spins, dawn and lamplight, midnight, noon. Sun follows day, night, stars and moon. The day ends, the end begins.” Michael Judge, The Dance of Time.

We all love fall mums. The vibrantly colored flowers and sturdy plants signal the beginning of autumn for most of us. We buy them by the dozen to decorate porches and front steps, plant in containers and window boxes, add to fading gardens, use as centerpieces and give to friends. Then, at the end of the season, most of them go into the compost. The next year we do it all over again.

Gardening organically is easy, healthy, economical and fun. I have been an organic gardener all my gardening life, which began when we moved to Andover in 1967. Shortly after we arrived, my father, an enthusiastic gardener, sent me his entire collection of well-read Organic Gardening magazines. Those boxes of magazines, a borrowed copy of Ruth Stout's " How to Have an Organic Garden Without an Aching Back" and and a book club edition of Rodale's "Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening" became my first gardening library.

  The further we get into this new century the more we hear about how disconnected children are becoming from the natural world. More and more children are spending long hours indoors with their tv’s, computers and video games, leading virtual lives rather then real ones. Long days at school are followed by after-school, programs, daycare or being shuttled from enrichment activities to home, homework and bed.  There seems to be little free time for kids to just muck around, roaming the neighborhood discovering beetles and butterflies, listening to birds, smelling the air and noticing swelling buds opening into lovely blossoms. It’s heartbreaking to think of all the stumbled-upon magic moments that so many children won’t have to remember.  Those little discoveries often become part of us, with the memory returning when needed to help shape our adult lives.   

In the life of a New England herb gardener, winter is the time for books and catalogs. When winter is doing it’s worst outside the window, herb gardeners pull favorite books from the shelves, gather up new garden catalogs and curl up in a cozy spot to plan and dream about the coming spring. It’s a good time of year.

Adelma Simmons, author and herbalist, opened her classic book on growing herbs in New England by noting that herb gardeners were happy in all seasons of the year. I have always agreed with her.

“Putting food by” was a familiar term to our mothers and grandmothers. They knew September and October were harvest months, the time to preserve fruits, vegetables and herbs for use during winter and early spring. They may not have all done it, but they all knew the traditional activities that came with the end of summer-- canning, pickling, jelly-making, drying and freezing.

I took the train to New York city last week to attend a Garden Writers of America meeting at the Queens Botanical Garden (http://queensbotanical.org). Despite the fact that I spent a lot of time in New York city as a child visiting relatives, I have never been sure where, or what, “Queens “ is. I certainly didn’t know there was a botanical garden there.