A Garden of Herbs

During the early part of the 20th century, a small group of women had a lasting-and, considering their number, perhaps oversized-influence on the public's interest in growing and using herbs. At the time, hedgerows and stream verges were still tangled with wildflowers, but stories about plants were drifting into obscurity, and common use of herbs was being supplanted by the busyness and conveniences of modern life. Fortunately, just as the pace of change was set to accelerate, one of those women, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, helped to preserve a link to the old knowledge through her many books and articles.

A Garden of Herbs, first published in 1920, was presented as a small handbook for anyone interested in growing and using herbs as they had been generations before. Rohde hoped that herbs would once again be more widely grown, and she believed that even a small city or suburban garden provided the opportunity to recreate a version of the old-fashioned herb garden.

Her book, A Garden of Herbs, begins with some examples of knot garden designs and then presents individual profiles of over seventy herbs-some that are familiar as well as some that are rarely grown in our gardens or used in the kitchen anymore. Also included are five chapters of recipes for soups and salads, drinks and desserts, perfumed waters, powders and pomanders-and more, gleaned from old stillroom books, age-old herbals and a wealth of other historical books and manuscripts noted in the bibliography.