Edible Landscapes
Recreating and preserving ecosystems are effective ways of enabling nature to preserve itself, but setting up such environments often results in fairly stable, low-maintenance yards that for some people just don’t satisfy the need to roll up the sleeves and garden. In seeking an outlet for an abundance of creative energy, both active gardeners and frustrated conservationists might consider adopting this guiding concept: the garden as ark, a la Noah himself. The idea here is to seek out and save plant species—both wild and domestic—that are threatened with extinction. Raise then in a garden designed especially to allow them to thrive, safe from the rigors of an advancing civilization seemingly bent on stamping them out. The challenge and excitement of rescuing and growing a rare orchid or caring for an endangered rose that was once grown in ancient Rome give zest to gardening.
When we think of Noah’s Ark, we picture lions, tigers, and giraffes, not daffodils, lady’s-slippers, and sacks of seeds. People think in terms of saving animals, not plants; and, hence, modern Noahs tend to be more interested in saving whales and baby seals than prairie bunch grasses and tropical orchids.
What good does it do, though, to save the giant panda and not its bamboo habitat? I don’t dispute the necessity of saving animals, but if we fail to preserve plants and their ecosystems, the animals that depend on those plants will disappear no matter what.
Sometimes I feel like the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Nearly every column, book, or conference on gardening is filled with news of the latest ruffled petunia or new rose color. “Look,” they say “the world is filled with new and better plants.” I want to get up on a rooftop and shout, “Hold it! What about the species we’re losing?” For every new petunia or begonia we create each week, we allow three species of plants in the wild to become extinct; and we doom to the scrap heap numerous “out-of-fashion” domestic plants. How can so many plant lovers be so blind? Ninety percent of the material written about plants in this country is concerned with the newest cultivated plants; it ignores the historical domestic species and the grim plight of the ever-more-vulnerable wild species. We gardeners must get involved in preserving plants. Let’s hear it for the endangered plant species of the world!
Why should we bother to save ecosystems and rare and heritage plants? Some cite philosophical reasons, saying that such organisms and environments have as much right to existence on earth as we do. Others want to preserve them because it is fun to work with these living pieces of history. But the practical reasons should convince us of the necessity for conservation. Like the panda, we can’t survive without plants. While it appears that this country runs on Big Macs, the real fuel is the ten pounds of hay per pound of body weight consumed by the cattle from which our Big Macs are made. Moreover, if animals disappeared from this planet, we would still eat well. As it is, plants provide food, clothing, and shelter for the majority of the people on earth. In addition to providing basic human needs, plants enrich our lives by giving us healing medicines, shade on sweltering summer days, and even the cotton for our jeans.
Herbal Medicine
Take two pieces of willow bark and call me in the morning. Because our medicines come in bottles and have unfamiliar names, few of us are aware that many of them have been derived from plants. Digitalis, which regulates the heartbeat, comes from foxglove; ipecac, which induces vomiting and is helpful in cases where poison has been ingested, comes from the roots of the cephaelis plant; and quinine, which controls malaria, comes from cinchona trees. Even the precursor to good old aspirin was first discovered in a plant: willow bark. Less well known is the fact that many of the so-called wonder drugs discovered between 1930 and 1960 were of vegetative origin: antibiotics come from molds, and reserpine comes from Indian snake root. Oral contraceptives and cortisone resulted from research done on the Mexican yam. It seems ironic, but just as medical botany is taking off, well equipped with spectrographs, electron microscopes, and computers to analyze and take advantage of newly discovered plants, many ecosystems and their plants are slipping away.
Gardens with a Purpose
Domestic plants as well as wild ones need an ark. Save seeds from open-pollinated (non-hybrid) vegetables and fill your yard with endangered domestic plants, both ornamental and edible. When we think of an endangered plant species, we almost always envision a beleaguered plant out in the wild. But wild plants are not the only ones endangered. More and more botanists are becoming aware that our valuable domestic gene pool is being depleted at an ever-accelerating rate.
By gene pool I mean the rich heritage of flowers and edibles that people have been cultivating for centuries. Some of these plants have origins as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. Even some of the plants that our great-great-grandparents grew one hundred years ago were quite different from those that we have in our gardens today. In fact, the gardens of our great-great-grandparents had many flowers and vegetables we may never have seen: red celery, ‘Howling Mob’ corn, ‘Maiden’s Blush’ roses, ‘Dwarf-Giant’ tomato, ‘Lazy Wife’ Beans, and thousands more.
What has happened to those plant species? Many simply dropped out of favor. Gardening is as susceptible to the whims of fashion as any other endeavor in our society. During the last ten to twenty years, for example, fragrant roses were out of favor and large double petunias were in. Now it looks as if fragrant roses are coming back into vogue. Also back with us are some of the old-fashioned single petunias and some of the more subtle marigolds and zinnias. Certainly there are many varieties to choose from, particularly when it comes to ornamental plants. Over the hundreds of years that people have been cultivating plants, there have been, for example, between 17,000 and 18,000 varieties of daffodils. Not all of the thousands of varieties are of value, but many of the old-timers that have disappeared would be cherished today. Some have unusual forms; many were very fragrant; still others grew with little water. Sadly, however, when these plants go out of favor, within a generation or two they often disappear altogether—another example of our “throw-away” culture.
While some wonderful new hybrid vegetable and fruits (that is, plants created through selected crossbreeding) have been made available for home gardeners, it’s their biggest customer, the big farmer, whose interests increasingly dominate seed-breeding. The seed companies, to help the farmer, have bred for yield and disease resistance. While those characteristics have indisputably benefited the home grower, other characteristics, namely, uniformity in size, ability to withstand machine picking and sorting, uniform ripening, and the ability to ripen after harvest, are not in the interests of home gardeners but have been foisted upon them.
Nevertheless, those modern miracles, the cardboard tomato, the tasteless strawberry, and the juiceless peach—always available, handsome to look at, and a waste of the effort it takes to chew, much less grow—are a reality. But with “progress” we are losing the delicious varieties of yesteryear.
[Future posts will present various edible garden plans such as The Heirloom Vegetable Garden, The Wildlife Garden, The Heritage Rose Garden, and The Orchid Garden.]
