Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Oasis of Peace
Saturday, June 27, 2015
All urban garden labors are love manifest. We imagine, dream, nurture. Our theme is love and our vocabulary the garden. Everyone’s vision of paradise is individual. Punctuation is parsed into volumes of color, scent, form. From the din and clamor of reality another reality is present in the garden. This oasis bares the signature of the gardener, no two are alike. We are united in our desire for paradise and it can become true for you.
City gardens are special places. Our senses come alive among the living flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruits and berries of choice. All is available regardless of skill or scope. What are necessary are willingness and an open mind. Close your eyes and look within. Soon messages emerge from stillness. Gardeners who plant fragrant plants hear the first word. Let’s take a look at the plethora of fragrant plants. Soon a melody forms from the random mixtures of plants, harmony delights us.
Do not overlook the humble petunia for its sweet, gentle aroma. Myriads of colors seduce the eye yet the plants unstated strength is fragrance. Generations have enjoyed the petunia for its sturdy growth in sunshine and loams of moderate fertility. Many urban gardeners are developing soils from reclaimed vacant lots. They don’t have time or inclination to compost their way into long term fertility. Here’s a fragrant plant that’s affordable and offers many choices, all united in their appeal to the nose, so close to the heart and the brain. Just a few tucked into a raised bed or clay pot rewards gardeners of any skill level.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTMints of every kind are beneficial to the garden. Peppermint, spearmint, chocolate mint, and their close relative, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) are guaranteed to please. Avoid those who define the garden in military terms such as invasive. I prefer the more accurate description of abundance and beneficial. The mints are a tribe of plants that explore and create fertility in garden soils. They thrive in barely composted organic materials such as shredded leaves. Mints find sustenance upon the frontiers of soil common in urban sites. They are the first colonists in the transition of shredded leaves and manure into humus. The mints will work for the gardener and who doesn’t enjoy wading into the mint for no special reason?
Easily propagated from root divisions, the menthe family travels well. I’ve brought samples from garden to garden with careless ease. They prefer moist locations and I’ve seen bright green patches in wetlands or along brooks and streams. Mints are hardy and tolerate casual passersby well. Indeed, this is extensive family is ideal for planting near seating. At their best after rain, mints can be cultivated during the hot summer months when other plants are less adaptable. Happy is the gardener who sits on a bench among the mints. Grow them next to entrances and exits. Each passage becomes a remarkable experience in fragrance, a greeting all gardeners extend to the world.
Mints are fine companion plants. The aromatic properties of peppermint and spearmint are antiseptic. Much of their success is due to their formidable chemistry. Insects are deterred and rare indeed is the mint troubled by pests. Tomatoes and mints are natural allies. Keep crowding down until the tomatoes are taller and leave alone. Mulches favor mints. Enjoy the journey in planting areas among plants that rebound from heavy feet.
Mints may be the first plant a child learns as memory unites with scent in small hands. Fun to chew for uplifting flavor, the culinary experts among us recall cuisines that regard mint as an essential ingredient.
Mint syrup is a simple preparation. Abundant sheaves of mint leaves release waves of scent in the kitchen as they are transformed into jellies or for the Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures, mint flavored yogurt, meat pies and lamb or in drinks and salad. Allow the mints to pioneer new grounds and do the heavy work of breaking down organic materials. They are easy to thin out and make ever appropriate gifts. Dry the leaves for winter use.
A garden stalwart that clamors for attention is the self-sowing perennial, anise hyssop. Robust in sunny fertile soils, anise hyssop incorporates medicinal powers with licorice flavor. Few can avoid smiling as brushing the plant whispers “can you just walk by”. Pungent licorice dominates the senses. The French have taken licorice toward its ultimate expression although good, there is no need to visit Paris for this treat. Sailors and offshore fishermen have long relied upon Fisherman’s Friend candies for sore throats. You can too and watch butterflies hover over the heather purple blooms. Once settled into the garden plot, anise hyssop will soon develop a circle of self-sown dependents. Mulch or better, ring with a paper collar under the mulch to restrain this happy family circle.
Does work consume your day? Traffic snarls slow you down? Are there just too many things to do and the garden is at the tail end of tasks? Honey suckle is there for you. During warm weather and hot months, honeysuckle comforts and soothes. Cold indeed is the heart unseduced by the sweet honeysuckle. Favored by hummingbirds and children who sip its nectar, honeysuckle thrives on the margins of the garden. This vigorous climbing vine triumphs over poor soils and requires no attention except admiration and love. Available in bright red colors, most of us know it as a pleasing combination of ivory and soft gold blossoms.
Encourage growth with judicious pruning and guidance. Honeysuckle sends tender shoots searching for support. Sturdy arbors, posts, stones, and walls unsuitable for other plants is ideal for honeysuckle. Charming corners for sitting nearby invite everyone to savor the scent on summer’s eve.
Honeysuckle is best propagated by layering much as in the manner with ivy, myrtle, hydrangea, and kiwi. Long new shoots lain in low trenches of old mulch, weighted with a stone or something similar and covered in the middle with compost will sprout for you. When the shoot is clearly growing some weeks down the road, prune from the mother vine. Be gentle. I like to start cuttings from each of these plants as ever appropriate gifts. Or perhaps the joy of assisting new life into being drives this experiment and you wish to renew or establish new plantings.
Honeysuckle blooms in the dark. At last, after the struggle for food, shelter and clothing, one can relax in the darkened garden and breath deep. Honeysuckle befriends everyone blessing all with fragrant benedictions, the mints and balms, petunias among us each a star. Close your eyes, breath deep, slowly exhale. Repeat. Paradise is here and now. Plant fragrant herbs, flowers and vines and be still. Listen for the messages of the heart.
Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.
This article originally ran in June of 2014
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