January 2013 at The Physic Garden project (PGP)

New year’s day, which seems like an age away now, was a perfect day at PGP.

With the sun shining and the ground soft enough to pull up the turf but not too heavy to clog up boots and weigh us down, we began gently digging a new vegetable garden, whilst making plans for the year.

A few forkfuls in and we were back in the zone, enjoying the calming influence the land brings along with the excitement of what the year ahead may hold at the garden.

When the new vegetable plot is in place, the raised beds can become the herb nursery and the vegetables can then go straight in the ground on an annual rotation.

Practical plans afoot include investing in a boundary fence, which is rabbit and reluctantly, deer–proof.

We lost the majority of our crops last year due to one kind of creature or another so this year we are determined to be more prepared and equipped to deal them.

I would also very much like a herb drying shed, as optimistically, I am imagining we will have enough mature plants to harvest this year to warrant a suitable shed.

I am hoping to make a fair portion of the medicines I will use in practice from PGP this year including fresh herb organic tinctures (dried herb) teas, balms and creams.

Other exciting plans for the year include inviting a lot more people to visit, take part and learn about the joys of plant medicine.

We will be running regular volunteering days and from late spring we will also be offering practical workshops on site and of course there is the annual open day.

We had quite a bit of snow this month and so most subsequent visits to the garden were limited to enjoying the scenery and taking a look at the tracks in the snow to see whom our wintery visitors had been. As suspected there were plenty of rabbit tracks which lead to a re-established warren at the northern boundary, and one or two deer have been on site.

There are foxes around the Stanmer Organics site but there were no signs of them visiting us during the snowy period.

Since the melt the first new nettle shoots have broken cover and I have made my first nettle soup of the year.I think it is absolutely delicious so I will give you the recipe to try!

I have noticed that the nettles always tend to grow at the bottom of a hill and in the case of PGP they are growing both at the north and south boundaries in abundance where there is a raised bank interrupting the gentle slope. At these points the land is rich in minerals deposited by the rain running down the hill. Cleverly the nettles grow here, absorbing nutrients that we can then harvest.

The health benefits of nettles are numerous and I would thoroughly recommend harvesting some and trying first and foremost a cup of fresh nettle tea. I usually just stuff a handful of nettle tips straight into the pot for the most delicious and delicate tea. It is so much better than any bought nettle variety that I have tried.

We managed to pop the garlic into the ground in January, using the biggest of last year’s harvest to provide this year’s crop. Whilst clearing the cardiovascular bed to make room for them I stumbled upon the ransoms bulbs lying just under the surface in wait for spring. I have yet to see them above ground as, failing to find any growing naturally on site, I bought a little pot of what looked like soil as it was summer and they had gone over and retracted back to bulbs, with the promise that come spring I would not be disappointed. Lets hope not.

I have started practising from a multi-disciplinary clinic in Hove this month, which is a wonderful space that both myself, and my patients are enjoying. Apart from tackling a stream of respiratory disorders, I have had the opportunity to use freshly made therapeutic creams, salves and balms with good results including Melissa lip balm in the treatment of cold sores and a wonderfully soothing fresh oat milk and chickweed cream, with a few drops of lavender, to calm angry red eczema and to help avoid a secondary infection.

December at The Physic Garden Project

For the December edition, whilst all is quiet at the garden, I thought I would give you a little overview of the project so far in the form of a brief account of events and a photo diary.

I became a director of Stanmer Organics mid January 2010. I was in the middle of my training to become a Medical Herbalist and Naturopath and I wanted a practical application for my learning experience. This is when I took possession of this small parcel of chalky, mainly uncultivated, land and the Physic Garden Project came into being.

 

In the first year, we began by dividing up the abandoned tiny grapevines from the previous project between the member groups of Stanmer Organics, before the massive, and on going task of clearing the land of weeds commenced. We cleared carefully by hand, removing bindweed, dock, thistle, bramble and excess nettles and looking out for any naturally occurring herbs and wildflowers that were already growing on the site.

In the spring of 2011 I hired a 360’ digger and a driver from an adjacent project (‘Future roots’, yurt builders) and we set about re-landscaping part of the site, with the primary task being to fill in the approximately 12m by 4m deep pit at the southern boundary, which was the legacy of a former and abandoned project.

 

Once landscaped, the new area provided a great space for our first planting scheme. Due in part to the very thin soil and also in an attempt to establish one area of relative order on the site, we decided to make half of this this into an area of 17 raised beds, filled with a combination of our own chalky soil and an imported mix of organic compost, from our neighbour (Brighton Community Compost Centre) and the other half into a clover lawn, which is relatively flat and ideal for future workshops and classes.

At last we could start growing, and from seed we began the first little herb and vegetable garden.

Our summer open day 2011 was a remarkable success, with a merry band of enthusiasts signing up to our future volunteering, workshops and medicine making plans.

In January 2012 we began by relocating 6 little inherited heritage apple trees to the new orchard area and started digging our medicinal herb circular garden on the main, gently sloping, south facing bank.

The ground was very uneven and still covered with weeds and quite a lot of couch grass but slowly it began to take shape.

 

We are forging friendships with the neighbouring projects, who are all part of the umbrella organisation, Stanmer Organics and during the spring we took delivery of many an unwanted barrow of “weeds” dug up from their sites.  Everyone was becoming aware that the herbalist loved what they wanted rid of.

 

By spring the new garden was prepared and we took possession of our first medicinal herb to plant in the bed allocated to liver herbs, a lovely Milk thistle, donated by ‘Fork n digit” the community food growers down the track!

With organically certified seeds, donated plants from our certified organic site and with a jaunt across country to Jekka’s Herb Farm we began populating the garden with glorious medicinal plants.

We have also negotiated permission from the Soil Association to import some, non-certified organic plants when the organic alternative is not available on the national database, under what’s called a derogation order. This means that in 2 year’s time those plants will be naturalised organic too.

During the summer we also dug a pond in what was a natural dip in the land, which to our delight, has become alive with wildlife as it beds in to the landscape and we cleared an area of bramble to reveal the perfect camping spot complete with new fire pit (the dingly dell).

Volunteering.

There will not be any volunteering this Friday 12th July as I will be heading off to Herbfest, an annual event for Herbalists of inspiring lectures and workshops in Herbal medicine. Many thanks

Lisa