In The Garden – Common Valerian

I write lots about my woodland garden. But it’s not the only area I have that is a “different sort of garden”. There is also the former lawn in front, which is a combination of what I planted and what nature decided to drop. A seventeenth-century New England settler would recognize lots of the plants out front, even though some of my neighbors would just describe them as weeds. The common Valerian is one such plant.

The species name of their plant gives away the reason why the early settlers brought the seeds from Europe for their herbal gardens and medicinal recipes: valeriana officinalis. That tag, officinalis, was frequently added to the name of plants that were regularly included in the Materia Medica. I recommend viewing the Wikipedia article on this herb for a full description of its uses(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_(herb)).

It’s not the only medicinal herb in that patch at Casa Carreras. There are quite a few more. Years ago, I found out from a family friend that the property I live on and the adjacent woods were once their family farm. All traces of the farm and the apple orchard that would have been beyond my yard are gone. But some things are very persistent. The old buried pits of 19th-century bottles by the stone wall sometimes yield small, perfect items, and many herbs persist well after their garden is long gone.

So I sometimes view my former lawn as the persistent memory of a farm wife’s herbal garden, trying, all these centuries afterward, to return.