What Is Happening in the BBG Herb Gardens and Kitchen This Week (Oct. 8)?

By Barbara F. Smith

Another sunny autumn morning greeted the Herb Associates volunteers in the BBG Herb Display Garden (pictured). Efforts this week turned to readying the garden beds for the coming of frosts and winter.

Liz Leonard, coordinator for the Herb Display Garden, favors a combination of “cutting back, potting up and leaving be.” For example, herbs that are annuals are removed from the beds. Some perennial herbs, like chives and tansy, are cut to the ground — as winter’s wetness only turns the plants mushy. Nepeta is cut back to avoid it seeding where not wanted. Lemon balm is cut near to the ground, just above where the new growth leaves are already showing. Bays, rosemary and verbenas are potted up and brought into the Garden’s greenhouse. Monarda stems with their strong seed heads are left for the birds to enjoy.

Of course, each gardener makes the choice of what to leave standing or what to clean out. Recently, the trend is to leave more plant material in the garden for four-season interest, and possibly to serve as food for birds or other animals.

The Herb Associates Kitchen Crew took an inventory of products useful for next season’s cooking, and labeling was completed on the remaining herbal products produced last week — herbal mustard, mulling spices, and some herbal tea blends.

Do come by at the Harvest Festival this weekend to visit the Herb Associates stand in front of the Center House. There you will find a wide selection of our products for sale — jellies, salad dressings, barbeque sauces, herb vinegars, herb simple syrups, dried herb blends and herbal teas, to mention a few. We hope to see you there!

Thank you for your interest in all things herbal and the work of the Herb Associates at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. It’s been a pleasure preparing these articles throughout the growing season, and I hope you’ve been inspired to grow more herbs and appreciate them all for their history and many uses!

To close, here’s a poem entitled “Autumn” by Emily Dickinson:

The morns are meeker than they were

The nuts are getting brown,

The berry’s cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned

I’ll put a trinket on.

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.