Herbs of the Season – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

by Barbara Smith

Herbs of the Season – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

As the days shorten and the growing season ends, the BBG Herb Associates Garden Team have finished putting the herb gardens to bed. Many annual herbs have been removed from their beds and tender plants have been potted and moved to the greenhouse to overwinter. The balance of the perennial herb plants will provide beauty and structure during the winter season.

Pictured above is a recent gathering of some of the Herb Associates, the volunteers who plant, grow, tend, harvest, dry, cook and otherwise prepare herbs in various ways to be sold to benefit the Garden. Our public season began with the preparation of the Mai Bowle, a herbal beverage served early in the Spring on Ray Boutard Day to celebrate the arrival of the growing season and the opening of the Garden. During late Spring and throughout Summer, many herbs grew and flourished in both the production and the display gardens, near Center House. As with all gardeners, this year we dealt with abundant rain and occasional pests. Our season of weekly meetings ended with the BBG Harvest Festival, which this year saw record rainfall on Saturday, but glorious weather and good customers at the Herb Associates’ booth on Sunday.

When we gathered for our recent potluck luncheon, we toasted with yet a new cranberry shrub (a non-alcoholic syrup made of a combination of concentrated fruits, aromatics, sugar, and vinegar), splashed into tonic or sparkling water. This year, the Herb Associates Kitchen Crew launched a line of fruit shrubs, which proved very popular with our supporters. Also new were a BBQ sauce and two herbal tea products. Dandelion jelly and violet jelly joined the many popular herb-flavored jelly varieties.

The Herb Associates Kitchen Team were busy all summer long, creating salad dressings, herbal vinegars, vinaigrettes, simple syrups, jellies, mustard, dried seasoning mixes, catnip mice, and herbal sachets. More than twelve hundred individual products were made, labeled, and offered for sale to benefit the Garden.

It is interesting to know that, for centuries, people have attributed symbolic meanings to herbs usually for religious or cultural reasons. History describes the Greek and Roman civilizations characterizing herbs as exhibiting certain attitudes or supporting certain attributes. More recently, in the Victorian era, the “secret language” of herbs and flowers became popular again. As times and cultures have changed, herb meanings have, too. Small bouquets of herbs or flowers (posies or tussie-mussies) were given to express sentiments in more formal times. 

My research shows that parsley is associated with gratitude, sage with wisdom, rosemary with remembrance and thyme with courage. Many of us recall the song featuring these herbs which was sung by Simon and Garfunkel a few decades ago. The lyrics were based on an early English folk song, which may be interpreted in various ways. For today’s purposes (with this last article for the season), I would like to express gratitude to the Garden’s administrators who authorized the preparation of these articles and utilized them on their social media. I am grateful for the help and wisdom of those “Herbies” who supported my research, proofread the articles, and provided photographs. The Herb Associates are a group to be remembered for their decades of work and their courage to carry on tending the beautiful herb gardens, thereby supporting the Berkshire Botanical Garden through the work of our hearts and hands.

The Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Herb Associates began in 1957 and have been making and selling products for the benefit of BBG ever since. At BBG, the Herb Associates oversee a display garden and production garden, both located near the Center House. Members/volunteers meet every Tuesday morning during the late spring through mid-autumn each year, coinciding when the gardens themselves are open to the public. Members plant, weed and tend the gardens, as well as harvest and process the variety of herbs.