WE ENTER THE HERB GARDEN

“Why do you call this your herb garden?

I am always asked this question as we walk down the slope between borders of marigolds and camomile daisies. It is true that this lower terrace at the rear of the house has never been designed as a formal potager. The style of such a traditional garden is usually symmetrical and surrounded by neatly trimmed box hedges. They often contain a fountain, bird bath or sundial in the centre.

The reason that this area at the rear of Das Helwig Haus B&B became our herb garden is its proximity to our kitchen. Rather than keeping a bunch of herbs in a glass on my kitchen table, I prefer to go into the garden to gather fresh sprigs as needed.

Garden path between marigolds and camomile.

I grow the German camomile (matricaria recutita) as an annual plant like the marigolds as it self-seeds and germinates thickly each year in August. The flowers are plucked when fully open, dried and stored. Later they can be steeped in hot water to provide a soothing bed-time tea to encourage a restful sleep.

We pass beside the feijoa trees under which I have planted seed of jam melons as they will need space to run out their vines.  Borage always self-seeds in this area too. It was the ancient Romans who first floated borage flowers in cups of wine. I pick a few dainty blue flowers and hand them to my garden visitors, remarking that I freeze the flowers in ice blocks to later float in a jug of water. The leaves of this herb are cucumber flavoured.

“These are feijoa bushes. Feijoas are frequently called the fruit salad guava. They make a thick and hardy windbreak here on our southern side, but the flowers don’t attract the bees. They have to be pollinated by birds.”

I pull off a handful of the red flowers and hand them to my visitors. “Like nasturtium flowers, these are edible. You can sprinkle them over a salad.” I stoke the leaves of a tall leafy plant, adjacent to the feijoas. “This plant is a blue flowering salvia. It is a perennial which frosts down every winter, but has big tuberous roots and grows rapidly again in the spring. The little spine-billed honey-eaters love these flowers and I watch them acting like a hummingbird. Their wings beat so fast as they poke their curved beaks down the throat of the flowers. This is companion planting, because the same birds then pollinate the feijoa flowers.”

“Do you do much companion planting?”

“I take note of what plants are happy growing close together and what plants don’t enjoy the companionship of others. For instance parsley will thrive if you plant it as a border to your rose garden. It is deep rooted and likes the same growing conditions as your roses. Other plants like chives or garlic can be planted amongst roses as they deter some of the pests.”

As we walk I’m stripping off leaves from the named herbs and passing them amongst my visitors to rub in their hands to release the aromatic oils.

“You see, there are number of vegetables that like to be planted close together, like tomatoes and basil, but there are other vegetables like beans that hate to be planted downwind of onions. The beans just won’t thrive. Spring onions like these, I always grow well away from the vegetable garden.”

Seeding spring onions.

I will save the seed of these particular spring onions, planted a year previously. Already I have established another bed of young spring onion seedlings for use this summer. However, these onions can be cut back close to the ground after this seeding phase and they will split their stalks to double in number with fresh shoots.

A lot of the herbs like oregano, peppermint, tansy, parsley, basil and lemon balm flourish happily in the half shade of fruiting trees. In this central section of my garden I don’t have a fountain or a sundial. Instead, I have trained a magnificent wisteria vine to grow over and old stump as my centre piece.

“What’s all this green stuff used for?”

“It is just ground cover,” I reply. “There were two weathered stumps here when I began to put in my fig, persimmon and cherry trees. I planted a curly leaved ivy to grow over one stump and wisteria to hide the other.”

Wisteria over old stump.

I have noticed these city people busily waving at bush flies trying to settle on their faces. October and November are the worst months for flies on the Granite Belt because the imported dung beetles haven’t yet built up in sufficient numbers to prevent flies breeding in cattle manure.

We disturb my cat, Patches, who has been sunning herself beside the peppermint. I break off lengths of this mint and hand switches to my followers.

“Try using these,” I say, “to brush away the flies. They don’t like the smell. When I was a child bunches of peppermint would be hung in household doorways to prevent the flies entering the house.”

The peppermint switches are gratefully accepted. “Australia didn’t have any cloven hoofed animals until the white man arrived and brought his domestic animals with him. This meant that unlike other countries with cattle, deer or buffalo, Australia didn’t have dung beetles to bury the manure from these animals, so flies became a curse. In recent years dung beetles have been imported from countries like Africa and are having some success. In this cool mountain district the dung beetles are dormant during winter. It isn’t until there is fresh growth of grass and much dropping of wet manure in the spring that the flies begin to multiply. At the same time the dung beetles, which have wintered in the soil warm up and start increasing in number. By November there are enough beetles to bury the manure and the flies almost disappear by Christmas.

Peppermint

“I steep fresh peppermint leaves in boiling water to make a refreshing tea.”

Waving their lengths of peppermint the group cluster around me as I halt between the lemon thyme and a fig tree.

Thyme edges a path.

“My favourite herbal tea is lemon verbena.” I strip some pungent lemon scented leaves from the shrub growing beneath the Brown Turkey fig tree and ask that they be passed amongst the group. There are gasps of delight as the leaves are crushed.

“This is such a versatile herb. The leaves can be arranged in the base of an aspic mould, they can be dried and mixed into a pot pourie.”

Now it only  remains for me to show this tour group the cherry tree with giant garlic and fennel plants growing under the extended branches before we pass around the lower part of the house and into the front flower garden.

“This cherry tree flowers in October and by Christmas it will have glossy, deep red cherries hanging in abundance and just begging to be eaten. Our guests can’t resist trying them, but they never eat more than one. This is a Morello cherry tree – the sour cherry used in Black Forest Cakes. We preserve a quantity for this purpose every year and the remainder we make into cherry jam, which you can buy at the Gazebo before you leave.”

Morello Cherry blossom.