Herb Garden

Created in 1937, the Herb Garden is the oldest continuously planted area of the Berkshire Botanical Garden. Since 1957, the Herb Associates volunteer group has been meeting weekly to grow and harvest herbs, and makes herb-based mustards, dressings and jellies sold in the Visitor Center. The proceeds support our programming.

Practical Plants

The herbs in this garden are organized by their primary use, with sections dedicated to plants used for cooking, medicine, dyeing or fragrance. It includes hardy plants such as lavender, rose, lady's mantle, and bee balm, as well as woody herbs like bay and rosemary that are tender in our Zone 5 winter and spend the coldest months in our greenhouse.

Annual herbs like basil, marigolds and nasturtium are sown and planted out each spring. Medieval monasteries, which played a central role in early western medicine, were often the first to collect and grow many herbs and describe their uses. The specific epithet officinalis is given to plants that were grown in these monastic herb gardens.

Did You Know?

Many of the chemical compounds found in herbs that we value in cooking or medicine evolved in order to help plants protect themselves from disease or being eaten by animals. Throughout history, nearly every culture has used herbs and the chemicals they contain — for health and healing. But some of these beneficial compounds can also be poisonous if eaten in large quantities.

Learn more about the Herb Associates.