DOWN TO EARTH
My Favorite Herb
August/September 1996
By JIM LONG
THIS PAST SPRING, I completed my third year as
chairman of National Herb Week. One of my duties has been to
participate in choosing each year’s official herb. For a plant to
be in the running, it had to (1) be widely adaptable to growing
conditions throughout most of the United States, (2) have uses in
at least two categories: landscaping, culinary, medicinal,
wildlife/butterfly attractor, or craft, and (3) be moderately well
known to the gardening public but have potential for increasing
awareness of its usefulness. Each year, our committee has chosen a
species or even a genus of herbs rather than a particular
cultivar.
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I’ll admit that I used influence in establishing monarda
(Monarda spp.) as the official herb for 1996. Other members had
lobbied for scented geraniums or a favorite variety of basil,
lavender, or rosemary, but in the end, when the vote was close, I
used my tie-breaking powers as chairman to throw my support to the
monardas.
Some years back, I began collecting various species and
cultivars of monardas. (Several species are known as bee balm
because bees are attracted to their flowers and perhaps also from
their folk use in soothing beestings; one, M. didyma, is also
called Oswego tea from the Indian territory where it grew wild.)
Although I planted all of my monardas in a single bed, I took
advantage of its several mini-climates, reserving the drier, rocky
edges of the bed for our native 3-foot-tall, lavender-flowered M.
fistulosa; some lower, moister spots in the center of the bed for
the deep maroon and purple cultivars of M. didyma; and the shade
of a rugosa rose for some varieties from the mountains of Mexico.
To prepare the soil, I tilled the bed and dug in compost and some
fluffy decomposed straw. After planting my monardas, I mulched
them heavily with straw to keep the roots cool and moist, a step
that gardeners in more northern states probably could skip.
My monarda bed provides a place to enjoy the flowers as they
come into bloom. Overhead, a bluebird house is occupied throughout
the summer by busy bluebird families. An old rugosa rose bush and
the lattice of the potting shed serve as a backdrop to monarda
blossoms, highlighting them and inviting questions from visitors to
the garden. Even my goats are drawn to the spot: they stand on
tiptoe as they try to reach up and over the garden fence for bites
of the aromatic foliage. In June and July, bees and butterflies are
constantly landing and taking off from the red, white, scarlet,
maroon, and lavender blossoms, seeming to regulate their comings
and goings without the help of an air traffic controller.