Notes from a Herb Associate, January 2026

By Barbara F. Smith

These are the days of snow and ice, a true winter for a change. Take a moment of cheer from Josephine Nuese who wrote in “The Country Garden”:

Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year. For gardening begins in January, begins with the dream . . . Every January is a fresh start.

Berkshire Botanical Garden's Display and Production Herb Gardens near the Center House are organized by categories of use for the herbs growing there: Think beds of herbs used for fragrance, medicine, dyeing, and culinary purposes, for example. Yet each growing season provides the opportunity to add new varieties or less well-known herbs to enhance what grows.

It may be that our readers tend to focus more attention on their flower beds, vegetable gardens or shrub and tree collections. Here’s a pitch for adding herbs wherever the growing conditions allow. Given their versatile and attractive foliage and flowers to recommend them, herbs may be featured not only in formal-shaped beds, but also alongside your “regular” garden, or grown in containers on a porch, patio or window box.

Another book that takes the monthly approach to its content is "The Herb Garden Month by Month" by Barbara Segall. She suggests yet other categories of herbs that may pique your interest in adding herbs to your garden areas:

• Herbs with edible flowers (bergamot, borage, garlic chives, hyssop, lavender, mallow, pot marigold, rose, sage and violas)
• English culinary herbs (chives, mint, parsley, rosemary and sorrel)
• French culinary herbs (bay, chervil, fennel, garlic, tarragon and thyme)
• Italian culinary herbs (basil, bay, oregano, flat parsley and sage)
• Ornamental dye plants (coreopsis, dyer’s chamomile and safflower)
• Potpourri flowers (lavender, rose, sage, sweet rocket and thyme)
• Potpourri leaves (basil, bergamot, mint, scented pelargonium, rosemary, sage, thyme and wild strawberry)

Surely one or more of these groups sound appealing to you, dear reader. Start small. Add something new and enjoy.

My last focus on a seasonal review of cultivating herbs may be found in Bevin Cohen’s “Herbs in Every Season,” which celebrates herbs in the season of renewal, the season of abundance, the season of transition, and the season of rest and reflection. The text in each season contains advice on growing and harvesting edible and medicinal herbs for the kitchen, garden and apothecary.

Cohen advises us to remember that our “herbal journey will last a lifetime. With each season you will learn to grow, adapt and change. What you might find challenging now will become routine with some practice. Struggles and adversity are part of the process. These are the natural forces that push adaptation and evolution forward. If you face hardships, have no fear. Take comfort in knowing that this season will return once again, and when it does, you will have grown. You will be ready. You are a force of nature.”

At the close of 2025, an essay entitled “The Real Victory Garden” by Rochelle Greayer appeared in American Gardener, the periodical of the American Horticultural Society. It was a call to us all:

Gardening isn’t just a pastime. Sure, it can be joyful, personal and deeply satisfying. Many of us approach it as a hobby — not that there’s anything wrong with that. But. . . to stop there is to undersell its power. When you garden, you’re not just puttering. You’re practicing skills that every community depends on: patience, ecological literacy, improvisation and generosity. You’re building soil, conserving biodiversity, preserving culture, and strengthening your neighborhood’s ability to adapt. These aren’t quaint diversions. They’re civic virtues.

As you pore over the abundance of seed catalogs in your mailbox or online, and even more garden books for inspiration, consider your role in the bigger picture.

The Herb Associates have been tending herb gardens at BBG for decades, with the harvest turned into wide-ranging kitchen delights offered for sale in the Gift Shop. During these quiet months, many are engaged in knitting mice to be stuffed with catnip, one of our popular gift items.

Do come see us at the BBG SpringFest in May, where the Herb Associates will be offering a “Mai Bowle” punch and herb-flavored cookies as part of the celebration. And come back to read this column for further BBG herb garden news of plants and products once the growing season begins. In the meantime, think, dream, plan and add some herbs to your garden!

Books referenced: "The Country Garden" by Josephine Neuse, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1970); "The Herb Garden Month by Month" by Barbara Seagall, a David & Charles Book (1994); and "Herbs in Every Season" by Bevin Cohen, Timber Press 2025.