A beautiful dome by Tend Living.

Meet my friend Britton Neubacher, founder of green-chic company Tend Living. Brit creates sustainable living sculptures that make you think twice about gardening, like the one above. What started as a small San Diego project has now transformed home and work spaces all over Southern California to reflect the native landscape in completely unique and beautiful ways. Read on!

Chrissy Dionese: I love the name! How did you come up with it?

Britton Neubacher: I was looking for a word that would suggest action as well as a descriptor for the larger goal: taking care of our planet. I wanted to highlight the fact that I work with sustainable practices that support life and one that sees plant tending as a lifestyle. People seem to like that part so it has become my DBA. More of the same good action!

CD: Tell me how the company got started, it was something of an art experiment wasn’t it?

BN: Tend began as a contribution to a sustainable design show at Design Within Reach in San Diego. My friend *forced* me into it and I was horrified, not able to see myself as an artist. I’m over that insecurity now though! The last thing Tend should be about is ego, so I try to leave self-consciousness out of the equation.

CD: Has sustainable living always been your way of life? How did your background in social justice influence your current inspiration?

BN: I think it has. I joined Greenpeace when I was eight and devoted my young life to environmental and animal activism, later, youth and women’s movements. My adult background is in crisis work with severely high-risk youth and community organizing around feminism and art activism. I have a graduate degree in women’s studies, which amazingly I was able to use for several years in the way of a career before I burned out.

CD: Why did you leave that industry?

BN: I’m really sensitive and didn’t practice enough self-care so I eventually had to accept that I was not a “lifer” in the helping industry. I think I made a little difference, at least I hope I did, but I feel so much more nourished and centered once I went with a more simple approach: to tend to the planet one plant friend at a time. It’s such a beautiful thing to assist a living being that naturally wants to thrive. People are too complicated and self-sabotaging for me! Also, I think plants bring people together in an unspoken language we all instinctively understand, so I actually feel more connected to people than ever now.

Britton Neubacher (on left).

CD: Some of us are new to interiorscaping, can you tell us a little about this type of design?

BN: Interiorscaping is the radical notion that people belong with plants. Really, it is just a fancy word for interior design through green and greenery. Placing plants in your living and work spaces provides aesthetic benefits and can combat rampant off-gassing known as “sick building syndrome.” It can even increase productivity. No environment is complete until it is supplied with life. Well-chosen and strategically-placed plants literally transform a space, and your life!

CD: How do you teach your clients and the community about the concepts of permaculture?

BN: I often plant on a graded arrangement (even in my orbs) so that the more water-loving plants will benefit from run-off of those needing less hydration. Terrariums are an excellent, semi self-sustaining eco-system in that the water requirements are greatly reduced and carbon dioxide usage is optimized. My goal is to make tending easy and fun so low-maintenance plants and plantings feed two birds with one hand, as they say. High-style permaculture with edibles may be the nest frontier for me!

CD: With all the water Southern California uses to keep green lawns alive, how will Tend’s creations influence a shift toward cultivating natural landscaping involving native plants that conserve water?

BN: I’m hoping my work will help shift people’s perspectives to see drought-tolerant plants as more interesting than they may have realized. It’s all about providing a format for the already-amazing-but-commonly-over-looked. I try to approach any landscaping that I do as a larger version of my miniature creations, so hopefully people will also see exciting landscaping opportunities from my mini plant worlds.

CD: Brit, you’re becoming popularly known with your eco-friendly wedding creations. Do you see sustainable “green” floristry lasting beyond a trend?

BN: It may be wishful thinking, but I really do. I’d like to believe a trend that has global meaning behind it is less likely to become a passing fad. Shift the individual perspective and the collective consciousness follows, right? I guess that’s what we would call evolution. Green weddings are necessary for our human evolution! Ooooh, I need to market that declaration!

CD: What can we expect from here? Any fun summer projects on the horizon?

BN: Only to expect the unexpected! I hope to always bring a freshness to green living (truly, the gardening puns are endless). I do have a very special on-line store planned for Summer and some thrilling collaborative projects in the works, including the release of “Golly Pods,” a living sculpture line with Jason Lane of Bells & Whistles. Stay tuned!

CD: What advice can you give to folks interested in learning how they can become more connected with the natural landscape in their locale?

BN: Get outside, shut up and be still! Seriously, just getting out of our heads is the first step, nature does the rest. Pay attention to how plants affect you and allow them to share their magic with you. Enjoy the discovery and the inherent connection as you wish each other well. Then tend to it.

Visit Tend’s blog and Facebook to see how Brit is changing the planet, “one plant friend at a time.”

Christine M. Dionese L.Ac. specializes in integrative medicine, medical journalism and is the VP of marketing at WellWire LLC. Visit her wellness and lifestyle blog, Reaching Beyond Now.

Photo by Dr. Orna Izakson.

Back in the late ’90s and early aughts, a small but information-dense ’zine circulated in the Eugene, Oregon area called “Weed Lover.” The premise was that weeds offend gardeners by growing where they’re not wanted, but that they nevertheless offer great value by way of food, medicine and pulling nutrients up from the subsoil to feed neighboring plants. They also may be physically useful: one gardener tied her tomatoes to their cages using bindweed.

One of the very best things about using weeds for medicine is that you rarely have to entertain the usual worries about overharvesting. It’s an interesting exercise for an ethical wildcrafter to try: Find a field full of an unkillable weed and keep picking it for a while after you feel like you’ve done too much. (Don’t worry, you can always find an herbalist who can use some, or mulch your garden with the extra.)

I’ve tried this exactly twice. The first time was picking blooming yarrow on a friend’s land in the Columbia Gorge. The second was picking St. John’s Wort on a land trust in eastern Washington. In that case, the plant wasn’t even native, but rather a European invasive. It technically wasn’t even overharvesting, but arguably just a feeble attempt at restoration.

Weeds are survivors in the game of evolution for many reasons. Here let’s consider a few that help humans be survivors, too.

Dandelion (Taraxicum officinale):

I love to please the neighbors in early spring by “cleaning up” my front yard dandelions — then steaming lightly and adding a squeeze of lemon and maybe some local feta. Dandelion greens have long been a dietary staple for good reason. Aside from being prolific, one cooked cup offers a third of the daily value (the new RDA) of vitamin C and a whopping seven times the daily value of vitamin K. It also provides 144 percent of your daily vitamin A needs, 10 percent of your daily calcium, 12 percent of your manganese and 10 percent of your iron.

Dandelion leaves are used medicinally in tea, vinegar or tincture as a bitter, taken before meals to improve digestion, and as a simple diuretic to reduce excess water in the system. The root is used in similar fashion as a bitter and also to nourish and optimize function of the liver, the body’s most important detoxification organ.

Chickweed (Stellaria media) and cleavers (Galium aparine):

Among the first garden plants to really take off as the days begin lengthening, I use these for internal herbal spring cleaning. Both are mild herbs supporting the lymphatic system — the back channel of circulation and also where much of the immune system resides. A daily tea of the above-ground parts in season will help improve circulatory sluggishness after the relatively sedentary winter season. Preserve these in vinegar, brandy or vodka to have on hand the rest of the year.

Plantain (Plantago spp.):

Absolutely ubiquitous in most of North America and Europe, it’s easy to overlook the power of plantain until they day you need it and it’s not around. That happened to me in the remote town of McCarthy, Alaska, when I needed an astringent to reduce swelling and suck out infection in a friend’s foot.

Plantain is a wonderful simple astringent, which, as herbalist Howie Brounstein explains, “dry, draw and shrink swollen tissues.” (Blackberry fighters take note: blackberry root is a great simple astringent, too.) It also has constituents that help disinfect wounds. Muddle the fresh plantain leaf as you would mint for a mojito. either with a mortar and pestle or chewed a bit, and apply directly to the site. You can add to hot water for a soak or wash, or take internally for  mouth sores or persistent diarrhea — after checking with a doctor to figure out the cause!

Common mallow (Malva neglecta):

Photo by Dr. Orna Izakson.

Sometimes, however, one needs the opposite of an astringent. And that’s where mallow shines. The weedy relative of both marshmallow and hollyhocks, mallow root’s soothing and cooling demulcent properties are useful both topically and internally. Think of mallow externally for dry, itchy skin or to help a sun or other burn. Internally, mallow can help cool burning stomachs and acid reflux, protect and heal ulcers, moisten lung tissues and ease constipation.

To use mallow as a demulcent, make a cold infusion by adding cold water to some root in a cup or jar and letting it sit until the water starts to get slimy. That slime is the medicine you’re looking for.

A note of caution for weed gardeners: If you tend to encourage the growth of plants you love, you might want to think twice when it comes to the weeds. There’s little reason to fear you’ll eradicate your dandelions, but coddling them will just make it harder to achieve other garden intentions.

A version of this story appeared in In Good Tilth.

Dr. Orna Izakson, ND, RH (AHG) is a naturopathic physician, herbalist, gardener and writer. She specializes in respiratory issues, mood and women's health at Celilo Natural Health Center in Portland, Oregon.

Photo by Orna Izakson.

At the end of a talk I gave the other day about gardening with medicinal plants, a lovely woman asked me if I could only have one herb book after the apocalypse/revolution/peak oil disaster etc., which book would it be?

Book geek that I am, I couldn’t pick just one. I cheated by recommending the new two-volume set, Earthwise Herbal, by Minnesota herbalist Matthew Wood. Then, I thought of some more:

1. The Earthwise Herbal

As mentioned above, my favorite herbal these days is the two-volume set published by Minnesota herbalist Matthew Wood in 2009. The first volume, The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants, focuses primarily on the European plants that make up the bulk of the modern herbal toolbox, and which are often cultivated on purpose or as weeds in people’s gardens. The second volume, The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to New World Medicinal Plants, considers herbal contributions from the Americas.

One of the unique things about these books is that in addition to offering information about specific herbs, Wood offers a survey of historical systems used to categorize and prescribe them. He explains systems ranging from the four element system of the Greeks and the five element system of the Chinese to they physiomedicalist tradition and southern blood typology of more modern America. This adds huge depth to his encyclopedic offering, making it a rich set to go through repeatedly over time.

2. Anything by Michael Moore (the herbalist)

If you live anywhere in or near the Western US — and, frankly, even if you don’t — you must own any book you can get your hands on by herbalist Michael Moore. His writing is as opinionated and funny as the film director, though with a different life focus. His three main books are Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West, Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West and Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West. They cover different bioregions but it’s worthwhile to own all three because of species overlap between the regions.

During his prolific life, Moore digitized much of his own work and that of his predecessors in herbal medicine, and a great repository is available for free online. His school, Southwest School of Botanical Medicine in Bisbee, Arizona, continues to offer distance learning classes via DVDs.

3. Herbal Medicine from the Heart of the Earth

Another of my favorite resources is Herbal Medicine From the Heart of the Earth by naturopath Dr. Sharol Tilgner. The first half of the book is a materia medica listing many commonly used medicinal plants. The second half offers detailed recipes for specific ailments.

Tilgner also offers a great public service by putting her materia medica online for free, listed by Latin and common names. While this won’t help you when the power goes out, it does make an excellent free reference in the meantime. Tilgner also hosts classes and a summer weekend conference on her land in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.

4. Two for beginners

As beginning texts, The Herb Book by John Lust and The Way of Herbs by Michael Tierra cover a lot of ground within their small covers. Both are commonly available used, give basic information about a large number of herbs, and include information about making medicine from the plants.

5. Getting growing

But all the herb books in the world won’t do any good if you can’t get them to grow — a critical skill come the apocalypse/revolution/peak oil.

My top two books on getting things to grow have been the same for years. And while these aren’t specifically about growing herbs, this is great general information for anyone growing any kinds of plants.

Start with Steve Solomon’s Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times. The book takes you through everything you need to know now, including how to choose seeds, how to feed your soil, favorite tools, bugs and diseases, and growing specific food plants. This is gardening 101.

The next step is putting a garden together in the most functional possible way. To my mind, that means Permaculture — defined by one of its creators as “the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.”

The most practical and accessible Permaculture introduction I’ve seen is Toby Hemenway’s book Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. Toby, the first person I ever spoke with about Permaculture, does a great job of explaining issues clearly and offering great ideas that instantly make sense.

Another great introduction to both permaculture and its huge potential for social change is Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community by H. C. Flores. Flores offers great and practical suggestions for making do with what’s readily available, keeping an eye to politics and maintaining optimism.

Two of the best books specifically about growing and using medicinal plants are self published by Richo Cech of Horizon Herbs — itself a phenomenal resouce for medicinal plant seeds and starts. Check out his classic Making Plant Medicine and The Medicinal Herb Grower.

If that’s not enough to get you started, online information abounds. As a starting point, check out my website GardenMedicine, where I continue amassing information and articles on these topics.

Dr. Orna Izakson, ND, RH (AHG) is a naturopathic physician, herbalist, gardener and writer. She specializes in respiratory issues, mood and women's health at Celilo Natural Health Center in Portland, Oregon.

Photo by Michael Lehet.

A long spell of deep cold knocked back the last of my greens and there’s a fairly even layer of deciduous leaves covering the ground, punctuated by bare limbs and decomposing stalks. My garden is pretty much hibernating.

But one of the bright points this time of year is my thyme, which looks sprightly despite the January gloom. Herbalists like to play around with lists. Example: if you only had three herbs to work with, which would you choose? Thyme is consistently on my lists. It’s incredibly easy to grow, tastes fantastic and makes powerful medicine.

In the kitchen

Most people are familiar with thyme (Thymus vulgaris) as a classic salad dressing and cooking herb. It’s standard in French stocks and sauces and it’s a staple of Mediterranean cooking. Tossing thyme onto vegetables before roasting elevates your meal.

Try these recipes as a starting point:

• Elana’s thyme salmon with leek coulis (gluten free)
• Mushroom risotto
• Lemony thyme cookies. A friend made a version of these over the summer (without the ginger) and it was really yummy, with a great, bright flavor.

Thyme’s medicine

Thyme helps support digestion. The compounds that give the plant its strong herbal smell also make your gastrointestinal tract do its job more efficiently. Thyme is broadly and fairly strongly antimicrobial, killing bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasitic worms.

If you’re worried about the flu, for instance, consider using it in Dr. Nishant’s antiviral soup. When taken internally, thyme also promotes excretion through the urinary tract, and helps disinfect on its way out.

One of thyme’s less-known uses—and one of my favorites—is as a respiratory aid. It soothes the lung’s mucous membranes, reduces spasms, fights pathogens and helps you cough out accumulated gunk. Take a large handful of fresh or dried herb, put it in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Then, with your head over the bowl and under a towel, breathe deeply to get the herb’s aromatic oils into your nose and lungs.

Externally, thyme makes a great skin wash or soak to help fight or prevent infections. While I prefer the fresh herb, it’s okay to cautiously use the diluted essential oil, no more than one drop at a time. Don’t do this if you’re steaming—I say from experience, as it burns like crazy!

In the garden

In many ways, thyme is a perfect garden plant.  It’s easy to grow in the ground or in pots, stays green year ‘round,  and doesn’t need fancy soil or a lot of water. It forms low mats of varying widths, with adorable tiny flowers like a miniature heather. Like many of its mint-family relatives, it feeds honeybees and other pollinators.

Grow thyme on any sunny windowsill, porch or patio. If you’ve got a bit of ground, try it between pavers—several varieties can handle moderate foot traffic—or grow over wide surfaces as a groundcover or low-maintenance lawn. Also consider interplanting it in your veggie or flower beds, where its aroma helps confuse harmful bugs.

Almost every sells a couple varieties of thyme, including common or English thyme, lemon thyme and usually at least one variegated variety. Farmer’s markets and food co-ops often sell plants, too; this is a great way to get the best varieties for your area, at the best prices, while establishing connections with local farmers.

It’s hard to avoid puns when you’re talking about this plant. But really, you should have a good thyme!

Photo by Orna Izakson.

Dr. Orna Izakson, ND, RH (AHG) is a naturopathic physician, herbalist, gardener and writer. She specializes in respiratory issues, mood and women's health at Celilo Natural Health Center in Portland, Oregon.

Photo by Debbie Schiel.

My favorite seed catalog came in today’s mail: organic Floriani red flint corn, green meat radish, Bolivian rainbow pepper, purple pac choy, ruby streaks mustard. These are the reasons I started gardening–I was awed by the incredible diversity of life I could sustain on my little corner of earth.

There were other reasons too. After my urban upbringing, I longed for the pastoral and bucolic ideal of self sufficiency and thriftiness. And certainly there were the political reasons: getting off the corporate-food trough while promoting biological diversity and personal health.

But what really pushed me past reading and into action was a full-color catalog that arrived one Winter’s day. I saw purple carrots, speckled lettuces, striped snappy string beans, and a bright orange tomato that turned out to be an eggplant! If your vegetable education came largely from mainstream supermarkets as mine once did, you’ll understand my shock. Who knew there were purple potatoes, or that we could grow Thomas Jefferson’s beans or the Anasazi’s corn?

These days I’m a passionate gardener and my garden supports over 100 species. Here’s why you should tend a garden, even if it’s just a couple of plants:

1. Get outdoors. Being outside can help many health conditions. The sunshine lightens most folks’ moods and helps produce immune-building Vitamin D. Researchers find that people living near green spaces have much lower rates of diseases including asthma, depression, heart disease, migraines, and even urinary-tract infections.
2. Eat healthier. At WellWire we’re always recommending that you eat the rainbow and gardening is one great way to do it. Vegetables begin losing nutritional value as soon as the plant is plucked and produce from your own garden travels the shortest distance between place and plate. Also, many soils around the country have some well known nutrient deficiency—in western Oregon it’s selenium—which you can address easily in your home garden. Feed your soil, feed your plants, feed yourself.
3. Love those vegetables. Gardening is a great way to convert knowledge about the health benefits of veggies into the action of eating them. Researchers consistently find that garden-based education in schools makes children more willing to try, like and eat a diversity of vegetables. The same trick works with picky adults, too…
4. Grow your own medicine. That lovely lavender you’re already growing can improve digestion and fight depression. Thyme makes a great ground cover and fights off lung infections. Garlic, onions and their relatives support the immune system and the heart. Even weedy dandelion is medicine, helping the liver and the kidneys. And so much of this is so easy to grow!
5. Be more community-oriented. Scientists have found that spending time outdoors changes people for the better. Read here about how gardening transformed the English town of Todmorden and its inhabitants, building food security, ecological sustainability and community spirit.
6. Pure joy. Part of a healthy life is making sure there’s joy in your life, every day. And that is one of the best reasons out there for gardening. For me, that’s about the wonder of nature’s colors and textures, and the sheer awe of actively and literally keeping history alive. And it’s a wonderful gift to share with your partner or kids.

So as the year’s darkest days settle in, take time by the real or virtual fire to go through the words and pictures of the seed catalogs and feed your dreams of summer. Here is a short list to get you started.

• Fedco Seeds, a Maine cooperative, offers great starter packets at fantastic prices.
• Horizon Herbs offers one of the largest selections of medicinal plant seeds.
• Native Seeds/SEARCH has a focus on traditional Southwestern crops including a huge variety of beans, corn and hot peppers.
• Seeds of Change was one of the first glossy proponents of growing heirloom seeds.
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield, Mo., boasts a catalog of 1400 varieties of vegetable and flower seeds.
• Heirloom Seeds in Pennsylvania.
• Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Happy garden planning!

Dr. Orna Izakson, ND, RH (AHG) is a naturopathic physician, herbalist, gardener and writer. She specializes in respiratory issues, mood and women's health at Celilo Natural Health Center in Portland, Oregon.