Divine Intervention

Back to school – hooray!  Last week’s snow, frost and lack of trains, planes and automobiles kept us from the shimmery gates of the RBGE. Today we bundled back in and let the sun shine gloriously upon us through a sea of snow banks.

Our previous homework assignment had been to ‘draw the constellations’ in readiness for today’s topic – Biodynamic Gardening. Great rolls of lining wall paper were drafted in and I spocked out Hugh’s ancient protractor and Rosie’s bag of coloured pencils to accomplish the task. 

Fortunately Fate has smiled on me as I had found a most wonderful book – Celestial Charts ~ Antique Maps of the Heavens (by Carole Stott) as Oxfam earlier in the week. Having spent the week reading it and not doing my homework, I decided I should refocus and opened my Faire son Potager a la Lune.  This was a mistake - I had to read that too and by the time I got through it, was thoroughly bewildered by the multiplicities of lunar considerations one should take into account before sowing, cultivating or harvesting a bean that I was ready to throw the trowel in…

Duncan Ross, however calmly led us through the labyrinth of Tropical, Sidereal and Biodynamic gardening techniques that have emerged from Rudolph Steiner’s seminal work on the subject. Consulted by farmers and producers in the early 1920’s Steiner's philosophy was that the sun, stars and moon all affect our lives and influence growth, health and productivity of all living things around us.

The Biodynamic movement has its roots (sorry) in both ancient planting methods and in new interpretations of the effects of the lunar and solar calendars. More precisely, how the moon passing through the constellations affects life on Earth as well as it’s own gravitational pull.

In practical terms, Steiner’s philosophy also involves a bit of ancient lore and (some would argue) mysticism.  Where organic gardening focuses on the health of the soil, biodynamic takes it a bit further and gives consideration to the nature of each plant, the biodiversity of the garden, associated animals and their enhancement with cosmic preparations.

To illustrate this we clambered up to our practical beds where we filled a cow’s horn with fresh manure and buried it 3 feet deep, there to mature and gestate.  Come March we will dilute the contents of the horn with water, potentise it and disperse this across the newly dug beds. Throughout the year we will also add floral water potions to the compost to give it true bio dynamic qualities.

We ended our day with a dose of hot ginger tea and explored the beauty of Floris Books’ Stargazer’s Almanac, which shows the night skies from an Edinburgh perspective.

Happy Hogmanay!

Snow, snow, snow!

Pitch black darkness greeted a very white and luminous landscape this morning. We’ve had snow tumbling down since Sunday and it looks like it’s setting in for a long term cosy.

Thinking I would bundle up and make the train got less and less likely the longer I waited.  Finally reason regained the upper ground and I decided to stay put. And so it appears did everyone else – class was canceled and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I took the opportunity to dig through Wikipedia and summon up answers to questions on base oils and borage and (as usual) got dragged down routes I didn’t know existed.  (You could live quite happily in a snowy kingdom if you had the internet by your side.)

Research did prevail and I got started on a few nodes of knowledge. Wiki providing a rigorous scientific resource with Google complimenting it on images.  Losing several hours, I got lost in the Ancient Greeks and their use of olive oil, Mediterranean herbs and calculating planting time by the constellations.  South America yielded beds of roses and rosehip seed oils that deliver eternal youthfulness and scar reducing qualities. And finally castor oil beans revealed their complicity as a key tool in Mussolini’s torture of prisoners….

Time for a walk!

Soil Secrets

Poyntzfield Herb Nursery

Our day started with ginger root tea: grated, steeped and infused with honey a revitalizing and warming tonic to counter the crystalline skies outside.  Duncan Ross had joined us, far from his herbal estates on the eastern reaches of the Black Isle to teach us rootimentary (couldn’t resist…) truths about composting and efficient herb growing.

First we enjoyed a virtual trip to his Victorian walled gardens, fortified against the glowering Highland fringe by 12 foot walls, sturdy hedging, poly-tunnels and deep trenches of compost and seaweed. A beautiful mosaic of green, grey beds, Poyntzfield Gardens grows over 450 types of herbs that’s up from the original 70 they started with in the 1970’s and sells throughout  the world. Secret to their success is a triple row of compost bins slowing digesting and decomposing the efforts of last year’s harvest. Wild weeds (herbs?) grip and root to the upper layers exposing an archaeological striation of the midden below.

But the day was too nice to miss so we abandoned our pens and tea and took off to the practical beds of the RBGE’s nursery gardens - there to establish with secateurs, pitchforks and spades our very own patches and prepare the ground for next year’s abundance.  We carefully plucked the seed heads of dried yarrow, fennel and borage,  snapped off the gritty broad bean pods, pulled comfrey and horseradish roots and catapulted heaps of expired herbaceous material onto the Herbology compost heaps. 

Gently turning the soft earth with fingers and forks, we cajoled the last weeds and stones from the summer field left the beds to sleep under a snug blanket of black plastic

Lichens & Fungi

Week 7

Pharmacology 1 – taking us further into the deep realms of science we began to break down the constituent parts of herbal remedies to understand what works where and how. Like the 7 steps to self-enlightenment, 12 to abstinence, 13 stations of the cross there are 14 components that make up a Herbalist’s cabinet of cures:

1. Acids
2. Alkaloids - Antraquinines
3. Bitters
4. Carbohydrates
5. Cardioactive glycosides
6. Coumarins
7. Cyanogenic glycosides
8. Flavinoids & antrocyanidins
9. Glucosilinates
10. Gums & Mucilaages
11. Phenols
12. Saponrins
13. Tannins & Pseudotannins
14. Volatile Oils

Louise Olley

Briefly outlining their qualities and uses we identified the plants containing these essential elements and how they worked, but further exploration will take place in 2 weeks. The morning had other delights in store.

Lousie Olley, Lichen Curator of the RBGE arrived with her own special box of tricks – in her case, plastic bags of sticks, twigs and branches covered in a hairy variety of green, yellow and brown lichens. Lichens are the result of symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae – one provides protection and the other nutrition. Rumour has it that the fungi might actually be ‘farming’ the algae for its own gain, but let’s not go there…there’s enough to divert us elsewhere.

Lichens are divided into different types: fruticose, foliose, crustose, and leprose and each clings to life in a unique way. And we in turn use them in a variety of ways: for fibre, fuel, tanning, fermentation, dyeing embalming, poison, perfume, food and of course, medicine. Best known to us all are:

What kind of lichen is it?

• Icelandic Moss (Cetraria islandica)  - in cough syrups and eye-makeup remover
• Usnea filipendula  - for wound dressing, uterine complaints and model-making
• Wolf Lichen (Letharia vulpine) – used to poison wolves in Scandinavia
• Dictyonema sericeum – a hallucinogen used by native S Americans to curse people.

Useful, I know!

The afternoon we moved up the food chain (well, maybe) to the fungi kingdom. Professor Roy Watling, Maestro Mycologist, took us through a repertoire of helpful, useful and down-right dangerous mushrooms. The uses for fungi and mushrooms are bewildering! Hats, handbags, deodorants, razor sharpeners, elasto-plasts (band-aids to my compatriots), snuff, horse brushes, painter’s tableaus and aphrodisiacs. Fungi (Fomes formentarius) was also used to carry fire – a type of living tinder box – from ancient times and indeed evidence of such was found at Skara Brae on Orkney and on the person of the famous Öitz skeleton, the 5,300 year old man found in the alps.

Professor Watling & his fungi collections

Our final lesson required a tonic – one of our own harvest of Sea Buckthorn gathered from the sandy banks above Gullane bents.

Buck Up! - Honey Tonic

1.      Heat several cups of Sea Buckthorn berries over a medium heat, mashing with the back of a spoon until you have a thick orange pulp.

2.      Strain through a sieve and return to the pan. 

3.      Add a cinnamon stick and honey to taste and melt together.

4.      Strain into bottles. Stores in the fridge for about 1 month

A herbalist version of Sunny Delight: no E colours, but loaded with vitamins C and A.

Tonic makers

Weekend Rambles

November 2010

Shoreline Apple Tree

Catching up on my long over due homework (sorry, Catherine!), I went off to capture what I could of a late autumn harvest of berries in and along the East Lothian coast

Sea Buckthorn along North Berwick Golf Course

Sea Buckthorn abounds – it scrambles, twists and twines into a Sleeping Beauty fortress along the ancient sandy dunes from Gullane to North Berwick and beyond (to Russia, I believe). Brilliant orange berries cluster in huge abundance in the joints and branches of the extremities of the silvery bushes. A forager’s trove– if armed with impenetrable gloves, long-sleeved coat, thick boots and very sharp secateurs.  The trick is to snip and freeze the berry-clad twigs and thorns intact – the berries will snap off easily once frozen solid.

Sea Buckthorn harvest

Along the country roads are farm lanes lined by hedgerows bursting with hawthorn and autumn berries.  But with few lay-bys (pullouts) it can be tricky to stop to gather – and if there are any sloes in the area, you run the risk of social ostracisation if pillaging someone else’s patch….  So I returned to the fringes of the NB golf course and found a solitary weather-worn patch of berries, on a gnarled bush thick, rich and plentiful.  Nearby was a stand of young Dog rose – covered in luscious ripe hips which fell neatly into my basket.

Do I have to de-seed these??

Haddington Herbals

A sojourn inland to the county town brought me to the new Haddington Herbals – a lovely old/new shop located at the end of the High Street. Filled with natural remedies, cures, cosmetics and lotions displayed in the antique cabinets lovingly restored. They also sell mixing oils, dried herbs, and essential oils for us DIY enthusiasts.

Green Pharmacy

Week 6

What fun we had today!  No, very serious stuff, but fun too…

Today marked our first attempt at true making herbal remedies – the beginnings of our own green pharmacy. Admittedly we started with the very simplest form: the art of mixing and matching 3 ingredients to create an ointment, salve or balm.

Catherine’s table was laden with objects fit for purpose: a 1940’s camp stove, electric ring, glass percolator, bain-marie, sieves, jugs, spatulas and the all-important pestle and mortar - mortar deriving from the Latin mortarium, meaning "receptacle for pounding” and pestle from pestillum, meaning "pounder" – the ancient symbols of the Apothecary.

On the far side of the table were the ‘green’ ingredients, or in this case the dirty ingredients; knarly, mud-caked roots of Alkanet and Comfrey plants, recently tugged from their earthly abode.

Before wipping out our pen knives and graters, we learnt the basics of plant identity for the Boraginaceae family. These are ‘Vulnary’ herbs – used to help wounds heal, many with antiseptic and anti inflammatory properties too. All are mucilaginous (look it up) and occlusive which allows them to impart their therapeutic properties to the integument… But, there are a lot of plants out there masquerading as Alkanets so good to be vigilant, and watch out for these close family friends:

1. English or Green Alkanet – Pentaglottis sempervierns
2. False Alkanet  - Anchuse Barrelieri
3. Bastard Alkanet – Lithospermum arvense
4. Or these downright imposters:

• Viper’s Bugloss – Echium vulgare
• Forget-Me-Not – Myosotis sps

Because what you want is this - Alkanna Tinctura – True Alkanet although we will let Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) and Borage (Borage officinalis) join the inner circle of friends.

Back to work.  We washed, scrapped, dug, chopped and grated our way through the root piles and then put our precious scrapings into jars and filled them with oil. Oils are a whole other subject which we just touched on (but will no doubt go back to). 

Our choice was of Sweet Almond oil, Calendula oil, Olive oil or Rose Hip oil to steep our roots in – each providing a different result. Following the ‘quick’ preparation method, instead of leaving our jars on a sunny window sill for 3 weeks (a bit hard to find in Scotland in November…) we are heating them through in a bain-marie.  20 mins later we removed the herbal element, drained the oil into clean jars and added the ointment maker – beeswax (at this point the oil is a liniment).

We were treated to the opportunity to extract pure beeswax from the comb. Melted and re-melted, skimmed and scraped, this proved to be a beautiful, pliable substance of wonderful fragrance and texture.

So, beeswax went into the jars (2-3 tsps per half a honey jar) and was allowed to melt slowly whilst we selected our essences. The choice was extravagant; from lavender and rose to juniper, black pepper and some venomous smelling others. Our olfactory senses were overwhelmed and an element of risk and chaos ensued. But once added to the cooled mixtures, everything settled down and slowly cooled into soft yellowy green ointments. A triumph all round!

Our last lesson of the day was in making a Marshmallow Root & Hawthorn Berry fruit leather, a mellifluous concoction of marshmallow root water, berries, cinnamon, sugar and lime juice cooked, whizzed and now hopefully drying to a chewy treat in Catherine’s oven…Yumm.

Books to buy: The Herbal Medicine Makers Manual - a Home Manual by James Green - (a Californian working in San Diego and Sonoma, or so Google tells me…)

Physic Garden Delights

Week 5

The day dawned bright and blustery after stormy winter night. Wading through great drifts of russet, ochre and yellow leaves collecting in every corner, I rumbled down the hill to the welcoming gates of the RBGE.

Great treats awaited in the form of our official RBGE Student t-shirts, sweatshirts and boots. Suitably attired we sat down to a quick lesson from Catherine on the history of Physic Gardens in ancient through to Medieval times.  As they were essential to maintaining the health and well-being of any community, strict laws were laid down governing their layout, design and planting schemes. Indeed even kings got involved starting with Charlemagne, who in 800 a.d. issued an proclamation to every abbey and monastery in his realm listing the plants that should be held within their walls, separated by place and purpose: vegetables by the kitchen doors, the physic garden within the cloisters at the heart of the abbey, with fruit and nut orchards to spread and cover the cemeteries.

A few hundred years later, not much had changed except that the lists had been extended to include Mediterranean, African and even North American species and now science was getting involved.  In 1683 in Edinburgh, James Sutherland published his Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis – or ‘A Catalogue of the Plants in the Physical Garden at Edinburgh’, a comprehensive listing in both Latin and English of the plants collected and planted at the original gardens.  Pre-Linnaeus and just before John Culpepper, the tiny tome lists 1000’s of plants by their then known genus, species and common name following the rules laid down by Messrs John Gerard and John Parkinson.

Oh what a garden it must have been!  We found the following:

Sea Mugwort

Snakeweed

Dragon’s Wort

Stinky beans

Aloe Vera

Pondering the wealth of previous generations, we left the warmth of the Library and headed off to see what still remained. Sadly the demonstration Herb Garden, flushed with ripe seed heads last week, had been seared to the ground. So we wrested a few pods from the reluctant Belladonna, snipped some Elderberries and a scoured up handfuls of Agapanthus and brought them back to the lab for an enjoyable hour of discussion and dissection.

In the afternoon we re-visited the practical beds of last year’s course to collect some more seeds and this time found a great harvest of

Marjoram Officinalis

Sambucus

Nasturium

Calendula Officinalis

Borage(white and blue)

Milk Thistle

Sunflowers

Cucumber

Running from the sudden rains we carried our horde deep into the Potting Sheds, a massive warehouse located the end of a pot-holed lane off Arboretum Row.  Great sacks of compost, mountains of boots, bins of forks, spades and shovels all flourish here.  Deep in the heart of this elemental space we were treated to a professional seed sorting and planting session and set to filling, sowing, sieving and tamping trays with our new harvest. Next year’s crop to come.

Garden Design

Week 4

Last week we were led through the maze of garden design theory and practice by Garden Designer, Diane Pyper.

We considered articulation of space, understanding of form (both in layout and in plant shapes), sense of movement and creating an ambiance as elemental constituents of good garden design.  Formality, informality, symmetric and asymmetric design, use and purpose all joined in as major contributors; with location, soil, sunlight and surrounds completing the pieces of the puzzle.

Our practical application of this new knowledge is to be put to use in re-designing an existing space to become a new RBGE’s ‘Physic Garden’. This will be created within the demonstration gardens on the north side of the giant Beech hedge between two opposing walls: a long straight yew hedge and a holly hedge with a noticeable ‘pregnant’ bulge. Laid out between them at present is the long bed of an original ‘Herb Garden’ with two smaller rectangular beds opposite. Planted in the 1960’s, little design has been applied to the space or the planting, so we started by completing a survey as to what was still standing.

As imagined, a war between the herbs had ensued in the intervening years, with a number of ‘thrivers’ evident (lemon balm, mint and tarragon) and a handful of survivors; St John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) and Burdock. Quite a few from the original list seemed to have been overwhelmed (or whacked) leaving little or no trace of their existence but notable by their absence.

Ensconced across the grassy path in their own corner, a coven of poisonous plants Deadly Nightshade (Atropa Belladonna), Datura and Chinese Rhubarb (Rheum Palmatum) were doing exceeding well – a multi-tiered bed of fragrant sweet peas notwithstanding. A lone yew still stands sentinel over the last bed filled mostly with Floxglove (Digitalis purpurea) and a profusion of Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis). We pondered the decision making of the original designer – to give a display of culinary herbs?  To warn parents of the evil nature of others? Or a simple sampler of ‘garden herbs’ then available?

Our day finished with a demonstration by Diane of the process of thinking, drawing, reviewing and finalising a garden design plan.  Far removed from the verdant outdoors, this involves a full packet of coloured marking pens, rolls of tracing paper, compasses, stencils and an inmate ability to draw. Each one of us must produce a (viable) design by end of November – let the competition begin!

Parisian Botany

Week 3

I missed week 3 at the RBGE to accompany Hugh to a golf match in Paris. Having looked forward to a few days of holiday, we flew off on the 13^th Oct - into the face of a General Strike. Negotiating miles of CDG’s airport with conflicting advice on how to actually get to Paris, we finally found ourselves on platform 9¾ and the free train to Gare du Nord. Bonjour France!

Our little apt on Rue du Bac was beautifully located for some of the most wonderful, quirky shops and galleries of the Left Bank. Meandering through the side-streets the next day, we came across a fantastic gardening bookshop, La Maison Rustique – a veritable treasure trove of Gallic horticultural lore, replete with dictionaries of plants past and present, bio-dynamic tips and techniques, manuals on how to 'potager à la lune' and numerous herbal preparations. Dredging my high school French from the recesses of time, I trawled through the pages of the books acquiring a new and evocative vocabulary for all things green.

(Hugh meanwhile secreted himself in another corner and found a modern-day cartoon-strip of gardening disasters and a charming DIY manual on how to fake gardening prowess: paint the lawn green.)

Further on through St Germain, we stumbled upon a tiny shop, Librarie Alain Brieux with windows displaying miscellany of an ancient Herbaria and related artefacts. In the centre of the cabinet was an exquisite 18^th c Herbal journal.  8 or 9 inches thick, opened to show a yellowed page of a precious specimen, elegantly illustrated with detailed drawing of the Botanist being chased by a wild beast.

Sated for the day, we spent the next few exploring the Louvre and Right Bank, leaving a visit to the intriguing gardening shop, Dey Rolle, across the road for the last day.  


What a mistake!  Entering the shop, I had the impression of finding the French Smith & Hawken. Windows and display tables were covered with silver secateurs, fine leather gloves, terracotta pots of verbena candles, velvet and corduroy gardening aprons and seed packets of ‘tomates a l’ancien’ (£5). All bearing the crest of a lost Bourbon king or as it turns out, La Prince Jardiniere.   

Upstairs promised more of the same but upon ascending the wooden stairs, I was astonished to find myself facing a full-size polar bear – stuffed, of course – for sale (a snip at 46,000 Euros). Four rooms opened in succession beyond, filled with a Noah’s Ark of taxidermy. A baby giraffe and elephant, buffaloes, antelopes, tigers and crocodiles were followed by a room of domestic hens, geese, pigs, calves, a pony and wall of tiny songbirds. 

Mouth ajar, I stumbled on to the third room which seemed to harbour more normal activity. Children and grandparents eagerly gathered around great wooden work tables excitedly pointing and selecting their presents - beautiful iridescent butterflies and moths, neatly pinned by store attendants into attractive arrangements and secured under glass to take away.  All real, all new.

It was only the normalcy of the last room that made me linger longer than rational. A long table of books filled the space: great tomes on birds, beasts and natural history, with racks of posters on dissection and anatomy - of every living specie, vegetable and plant.  Quietly lying in the centre, I spied a oversized hardback Herbal.  Safely illustrated with pages of herbs and medicinal plants with complementary info on preparation, remedies and amusing historical anecdotes. 


But I should have known better. Just next to this was a similarly elegant herbal, but this one on deadly plants; tips on preparing and storing poisons, recipes for violent death potions, with illustrations of Catherine de Medici dispatching her enemies.  Vive la France!

Elementary Botany

Week 2

Issued with my electronic door-opening dongle, I whisked through last week’s maze of doors in a blaze of confident navigation.  Arriving at LR2, I squeezed into the far seat of the back row and absorbed the growing sense of expectation from the gathered class. Catherine had arranged a lovely bank of flowers, seed heads, dried cones and specimens all along the front table – a glorious riot of autumn colours – soon to become items of scientific enquiry.

Greg Kinicer, RBGE Botanist, took us through our paces in elementary botany and nomenclature.  Linnaeus’ classifications laid bare, we learnt the difference between kingdoms, divisions, classes, subclasses, orders, family, genus, and species. Armed with slides and brandishing thorny spikes of artichoke we followed the division into families:

• Cruciferae (Brassicaceae) – cabbage family
• Composite ((Asteraceae) – daisy family
• Graminaceae (Poaceae) – grass family
• Guttiferae (Hypericaceae) – St John’s Wort family
• Labiatae – (Lamiaceae) – mint family
• Leguminosae (Fabaceae) – pea family
• Palme (Arecaceae) – palm family
• Umbelliferae (Apiaceae) - carrot family

Each family was further described by species within their genus, categorized by leaf structure and catalogued with proper use of italics. Cultivars were allowed a brief entry with mutants following.  

We then abandoned our Powerpoint presentation and whiteboard for the broad avenues and grassy slopes of the gardens. Gathering under the pointed bows of the great Monkey Puzzle tree we learned hat most plants were hermaphrodites who adapted their sexual habits to reproductive needs. Cones and flowers produced together, leaf structures that weren’t really leaves at all but parts of a flower, whether acuminated, truncated or obtuse and extraordinary measures taken to spread, grow and dominate.

The afternoon was much less dramatic. 

We were treated to a beautiful exposition on creating Herbaria specimens (homework to come) by Kate Eden in the lofty halls of the worldwide collections. (Darwin’s own handiwork is held within these hallowed halls.)  Employing tweezers, thread and needle, surgical tape and strong sacks of sand with great agility, Kate took us through the process of recreating nature’s artistry in 2D displays for posterity. 

Around the corner, three RBGE staff were migrating the contents of the renown Herbaria into digital format. Cross-referenced with images and data from around the globe, this will be the beginning of a new age in our understanding and documentation of plant life on earth.

Starting Off

Week 1

The day started with a great sense of anticipation and angst. Grey skies swept over the Edinburgh skyline, gusting around me as I wended my way from Waverley towards the Firth of Forth towards Inverleith. Trundling down through Broughton I stopped to extract a hot coffee and a scone from a Castro Street lookalike and pressed on to Canonmills. Taylors,the old bakery is gone, piano stores proliferate, Ethiopian cafes now span the curb, but Warriston Gardens and the temples of Inverleith Row remain the same. Crossing the Water of Leith and on up the hill, buses, biddies and pushchairs all joined in me as we progressed in a steady stream towards the magical silver gates of the RBGE.

What on earth was I doing here? Who else would be here? Was this pure and utter folly? I passed through gardens, into the administration buildings, nodded at front-desk security and along the corridors of hushed enquiry towards the classrooms. Office workers faded into gardeners, pot plants became specimens and blasts of hothouse air greeted my tentative arrival at Lecture Room 2

And there we all were – ready for a new day.

We are 6 in all, 1 man and 5 women from ages 19 – 50+ and our delightful tutor, Catherine Payne-Stewart. We completed forms, signed sheets, ordered secateurs and sweatshirt and heard the Health & Safety chat.  We chatted, drank fennel tea and checked out the room, the atmosphere, the ambiance and the characters to be part of our life over the next 29 weeks.