Category: Herbs

climate change / Compost / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Geophytes / Herbs / Native Plants / Native Trees / Perennial Care / Permaculture / Sustainable Gardening / Water Wise / Watering / Weather

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Making a Resilient Drought-Tolerant Garden Part I: Right Plant, Right Place

  Maybe it will rain, and maybe it won’t.  It has been unusually dry in our area for the past several months.  Some of the little starts I planted with high hopes in March and April have been struggling to take hold.  I need to water large areas of our garden several times a week, as though it were July already.   And regular irrigation just isn’t an option for many gardeners. We are relatively fortunate in coastal Virginia because we...

Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Propagation / Wildlife Gardening

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Landscaping With Herbs Part III: Annual, Biennial and Tender Perennial Herbs

Benefits of Garden Herbs Herbs attract hummingbirds and butterflies like few other plants.  It is worth planting a few herbs whether you plan to harvest and cook with them or not because they are tough, easy to grow, and beautiful.  They come with side benefits; their essential oils not only offer fragrance and flavor, but they also deter grazers.  If you have watched deer chew your roses and impatiens like deer candy, know that your herbs will survive their curiosity. ...

Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Invasive Plants / Perennial Care / Permaculture / Sustainable Gardening / Tender Perennials / Vegetable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

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Landscaping With Herbs Part II:  Deciduous Perennial Herbs

What is an Herb? Why is mint an herb, but clover isn’t?  Have you ever given it much thought?  Botanically, any plant with a soft stem, that dies back in winter, is ‘herbaceous.’  Were you give a stack of a dozen cards, each with the name and picture of a plant, could you sort them into ‘herbs’ and ‘not herbs’? If asked, most of us could probably name at least five herbs.  Those used in cooking, like basil and thyme...

Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Evergreen Perennials / Evergreen Shrubs / Food Forest / Fragrant Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Heirloom plants / Herbs / Sustainable Gardening / Therapeutic Gardening / Wildlife Gardening / Winter Gardening

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Landscaping with Herbs in Williamsburg

  Once upon a time, I found herb gardening a topic of mystique and mystery.  Maybe it was the herb gardening books I found, with their illustrations of medieval knot gardens, and the cute little pots of culinary herbs grown on the wide, sunny windowsill of someone’s gourmet kitchen.  Or maybe it was learning that many herbs prefer a Mediterranean climate with dry, rocky soil and lots of sunshine.  How could I replicate that in Virginia? It may have been...

Community Gardening / Fall / Farming / Garden Maintenance / Herbs / Teaching Garden / Vegetable Gardening

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Mattey’s Garden

Mattey’s Garden is a hands-on learning garden at the Matthew Whaley Elementary School. And while the students were absent due to COVID-19, the garden continued to grow, including the weeds. Luckily, Louann Martin, who heads up this project for the James City County Williamsburg Master Gardener Association (JCCWMGA), assembled a team made up of the elementary school’s families and students as well as JCCW Master Gardeners. This team has been tending the garden with a watchful eye pruning, weeding, and...

Community Gardening / Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Herbs / Organic Vegetable Gardening / Therapeutic Gardening

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Therapeutic Gardening in a Botanical Garden

A Special Needs Gardening Program! A collaboration between our Master Gardeners and Arc, the Arc of Abilities Day Support Program is for adults with special needs.  The program teaches participants how to grow and use flowers, vegetables, and herbs that they cultivate in four large, raised beds year-round in the Williamsburg Botanical Garden’s Therapeutic Garden, and on rainy days in the Park’s Visitor’s Center. In a partnership that has lasted for more than five years, Master Gardeners meet with Arc...

Animal repellant products / Beneficial Insects / Container Gardens / Edible Plants / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Herbs / Tender Perennials / Wildlife Gardening

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Designing With Lemon Scented Plants

  Picnics with citronella candles, lemon scented furniture polish and sweet tea with lemons all recall happy childhood memories.   Fragrance has a profound ability to create or shift a mood, to trigger memories and create new ones.  Just as cinnamon evokes the holidays; crisp, cool lemon is a summertime fragrance. Most lemon scented plants thrive in warm climates.  Lemon trees, Citrus limon, are hardy only to Zone 8.  Originally native to Asia, they spread throughout the ancient world wherever the...

Container Gardens / Crafting With Plants / Evergreen Shrubs / Fragrant Plants / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Herbs / Holiday Plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Tender Perennials

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Tips for Growing Holiday Plants

  Did Santa bring you a potted plant for Christmas?  Or maybe a neighbor dropped by with a beautiful potted something to spread a bit of good cheer your way?  Or do you always linger at the rack of holiday plants and wonder which ones you might be able to keep alive for a few weeks this winter? December and January are a great time to shop for plants.  And this week, especially, after Christmas, you’ll find some good values...

Beneficial Insects / Birds / Bulb Gardening / Container Gardens / Flowering Shrubs / Garden Design / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Herbs / Native Plants / Ornamental Shrubs / Permaculture / Sustainable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

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Winter Flowers for Pollinators

  Did you notice bees and other insects feeding later than usual last year?  And did you notice how many were out feeding on warm days last winter?  Our roller coaster weather affects insects, birds and other animals.  They may be out and about on warmish days in months when we don’t expect to see them.  And, of course they are hungry! Increased activity translates into an increased need for calories.  Providing winter forage for pollinators and birds presents gardeners...

Animal repellant products / Container Gardens / Deer / Edible Plants / Flowering Shrubs / Food Forest / Garden Design / Garden Maintenance / Gardening on the Wild Side: Working in Harmony with Nature / Herbs / Perennial Care / Permaculture / Soil Conservation / Sustainable Gardening / Wildlife Gardening

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Planting a ‘Food Forest’ at Home for Sustainable Harvests

For most of human history, families relied on gathering foods growing in their environment for some portion of their diet.  And many of these delicious and nutritious foods grow on long-lived trees or shrubs, from persistent perennials, or from plants that readily self-seed.  This very sustainable form of agriculture allows for food production with few inputs of water, fertilizer or labor, once the plants establish.  Perhaps most importantly, there is minimal disturbance to the soil’s ecosystem.