Bush beans and oregano.

When we learn about Permaculture — or any kind of gardening, for that matter — we often see that certain plants are listed as medicinal. But do you ever wonder what part of the plant to use? When to pick it? What kind of health issues the plant medicine is used for? Would it be handy to get some ideas about this before spring planting?

It’s one thing to know that plants have medicinal functions, but Permaculture education rarely includes the body of knowledge needed to actually make use of plant medicines.

Join the Portland Permaculture Guild at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15 when herbalist, Permaculture designer and naturopathic physician Orna Izakson will discuss the functions and uses of many garden medicinals. The Garden Medicine slideshow draws from Orna’s extensive study of herbal medicine, with an eye to Permaculture functions and practical ideas for putting the people’s medicines back into the people’s hands.

To learn more about Orna, see GardenMedicine.com or CeliloHealth.com. PPG meetings are held at Pacific Crest Community School at NE 29th and Davis (2 blocks N of Burnside) in Portland, Oregon. The meeting starts at 7pm. Please enter at the North door (Davis), or the door from the parking lot.

Gardeners have a big advantage during deep darkness of a northwest winter: We get to pore over garden books and catalogs that offer shards of sunlight and whiffs of spring. Dreaming about striped tomatoes, salivating over the prospect of a fresh melon, imagining the thrum of a snapping pea, gardeners know that their dreams and will be rewarded with a well-stocked kitchen when the sun returns.

While curled up by the fire or the space heater with your summer hopes this winter, consider adding the flowerful, textural and healing world of growing medicine along with your food. The results will improve your garden — many medicinal plants also support beneficial bugs while confusing problematic pests — and improve your health.

It is absolutely irresponsibly unfair to ask any herbalist to narrow their favorite herbs down to a measly ten, and reasonable people will disagree heatedly about how to go about trying. This particular list is intended as a general top 10 list of medicinals that are easy to grow from seed or starts. This article is not intended to substitute for medical advice, as each person has a specific history and specific needs.

1. Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

This familiar salad-dressing herb is actually a medicinal powerhouse. As its most common use suggests, thyme aids digestion. It also kills bacteria, fungi and parasitic worms.

Thyme carpet at Avena Botanicals' demonstration garden.

One of thyme’s less-known uses is as a respiratory aid. It soothes the lung’s mucous membranes, limits spasms, fights pathogens and helps you cough out accumulated gunk.

Steaming is a great for this purpose: 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 wonderful aromatics into your nose and lungs.

Use thyme externally as a skin wash or soak to help fight or prevent infections. Internally, thyme promotes excretion through the urinary tract, and can help disinfect on its way out.

The low-growing aromatic plant is easy to maintain in a garden or on a window sill.

2. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

The Greek story of Achilles offers clues to the medicinal nature of this plant. The hero’s mother, the nymph Thetis, dipped her newborn son in the River Styx to make him immortal. His only vulnerable spot was his heel, where she’d held him.

The herb named for him is most famous for staunching bleeding in wounds. It also is a bitter tonic aiding digestion, decreases inflammation, tightens lax membranes, helps relieve pain, and kills bacteria and fungi. Taken hot it stimulates sweating; taken cold it stimulates urine flow. As a flower essence yarrow is a favorite for emotional and spiritual boundaries. Alaskans rub the flowers on their skin to ward of mosquitoes, with some effect.

Yarrow loves sun, tolerates shade, and is very drought resistant once established.

3. Garlic (Allium sativum)

This is one of the plants that, given a choice, I’d have to have with me on a desert island. It has shockingly broad medicinal uses, tastes great, deters garden pests, grows easily and is very space efficient. What’s not to love?

It’s a must-have herb during the winter for its broad antimicrobial effects. Not only is it effective at fighting viruses and bacteria, but it also knocks out parasites and fungi including Candida albicans. This makes it useful for infections almost anywhere in the body, taken internally in food or applied topically to an infected site.

Garlic also lowers bad cholesterol while raising good cholesterol, and helps lower high blood pressure. It prevents dangerous blood clots, lowers high blood pressure and has been shown to help limit cancer growth.

4. Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis)

The marshmallow plant is all about the smooth. Suede-silk leaves grow in tall, upright, space efficient plants. The medicinal variety’s small white flowers are delightful, though not especially showy.

Marshmallow is a simple but powerful medicine, providing nutritious, soothing slime to help almost condition that’s dry or raw: lungs, burns, constipation, burning from bladder infections and even peptic ulcers.

The medicine comes from the root, so grow a patch of marshmallow to ensure continual harvest. Add a handful of the dried or fresh root to cool water an let sit for at least 15 minutes and then drink. Instant slime!

5. Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

Cheery calendula’s prolific yellow and orange flowers are good for both the garden and the gardener. The plant deters pest insects much like their marigold cousins and offer a bright contrast to their neighbors.

The sticky resin on Calendula’s edible flowers is terrific for healing wounds and soothing membranes, externally and internally. Used internally, calendula combines well with drying herbs for respiratory infections. Dried flowers can brighten wintertime teas—you can eat the whole flower as it floats around in your cup.

As few as two or three of the sun-loving plants will give provide more flowers than a gardener can easily keep up with picking, self seeding prolifically so the garden is always blooming.

6. Artichoke (Cynara scolymus)

Many people have heard about milk thistle as a miracle herb for the liver. What you may not have heard is that its near cousin artichoke has the same benefits while being far more space efficient — and much less invasive. While artichoke plants may be relatively low yielding of the flower buds we eat the dinner table, the plant is extravagant in the leaves it offers as medicine.

Artichoke has an affinity for the entire digestive system. The bitter taste of the leaves help promote proper digestive secretions, which help people get the most from their meals. The liver is also where the body makes cholesterol, so it’s not surprising that artichoke helps lower cholesterol even in the face of a poor diet. It’s also handy if your idea of eating artichokes involves lots of melted butter.

Some research even suggests the herb can lower blood sugar, helping stem a tendency toward Type II diabetes that is increasingly prevalent in the United States.

7. Lavender (Lavandula spp.)

Best known for its perfume, lavender is also a remarkably versatile medicine. Lavender is a traditional ingredient in the seasoning Herbs de Provence, where its floral and bitter qualities help improve digestion while protecting the diner from pathogens.

The chemicals that make lavender so wonderfully aromatic also make it a potent pathogen fighter. The name comes from the French word for washing; the earliest antimicrobial soaps were made with lavender. The flowers fight bacteria, viruses and fungi, and its essential oil helps heal wounds and burns.

Lavender is also deeply cheering in cases of sadness or mild depression. A hot cup of lavender tea, brought to you by a friend, is wonderful for alleviating a broken heart.

8. Passionflower (Passiflora spp.)

Passiflora cerulea.

This lush, tropical vine does remarkably well in western Oregon, thriving in sun even with substantial neglect. They can climb almost anything, from a trellis to window screens. And because they’re climbers, there’s more space on the ground to grow other things.

The varieties that do best in the Pacific Northwest don’t usually produce much by way of fruit, but prolifically offer their unusual and beautiful flowers — the part used medicinally.

As prolific as they are, medicinally passionflower is about calm. Taken internally as tea or tincture, passionflower reduces restlessness and anxiety, relaxes spasm (including the tightening of blood vessels in high blood pressure), limits inflammation and helps promote sleep.

9. Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra)

Licorice is one of the power-house medicinal plants, offering such a broad spectrum of health effects that many herbalists consider it good for just about everything. It’s a garden power house, too: It’s in the pea family, and like its relatives also fixes nitrogen from the air to make it available to nearby plants.

The medicine is in the root, so plant a patch to keep a steady supply on hand. It grows very easily from seed.

Licorice root is famously immune supporting and anti-viral— it has been shown to help with conditions including hepatitis C. Like marshmallow it has soothing properties, and so is often used for irritation in the digestive tract, urinary tract and the lungs. Licorice supports the liver and the adrenals, making it very useful in many cases of allergies and asthma. It also helps the lungs by reducing spasms and inflammation while supporting healthy coughing to expel mucus.

10. Something you plant for the sheer joy of it

Few gardeners face the problem of too much room to plant. And with so many plants performing multiple functions, it can be hard to justify growing something just for the joy of it.

Consider this a doctor’s prescription to do just that.

Joy is critical to a person’s whole health — it’s on every treatment plan I give to every patient. Sometimes a plant comes along that you just adore even though it’s not edible, or it only flowers for a few weeks once a year, or it takes an unconscionable amount of space.

Contorted mulberry, Morus bombycis.

My joy plant for many years was lilac, and it took great effort to give myself permission to plant one. My new joy plant is a contorted mulberry (Morus bombycis). It has a beautiful shape in the winter and lush foliage in the summer. But it’s a complete knockout in the fall when its leaves turn a brilliant clear yellow that glows even in moonlight.

I see my mulberry whenever I go to or from my bedroom. It reminds me of the beauty of the world and my part in it. And after all, isn’t that one of gardening’s biggest payoffs?

Looking for plants? Check out my favorite seed companies, plant companies, local Portland gardening resources and my book recommendations.

NB: A version of this story originally appeared in In Good Tilth.

Photo by Nihan Aydin.

It’s the “most wonderful time of the year” — and depression is rampant. Between the darkness (if you live in the northern hemisphere), family drama, financial stresses… it’s a time when many people find their mood going in an unhappy direction. Here are some tangible tips for feeling better.

1. Exercise.
Depression by definition diminishes most motivation. But getting off the couch can make a remarkable difference in your emotional resilience. Exercise literally changes not only the chemicals being made in your brain, but also how well those chemicals work. It doesn’t have to be intense and it doesn’t have to be very much. Just starting will help those clouds lift.

2. Get some sun.
The winter’s lack of light makes lots of people low. The effect isn’t new — it’s been described since the 1800s. These days there’s a name for it, complete with cute acronym: seasonal affective disorder, or SAD.

Adding light can help. Outdoor, natural daylight is best, especially in the morning. But many companies also sell light boxes that researchers find really do help — even for summertime depression.

Photo by Nathalie Dulex.

3. You are how you eat.
Author Michael Pollan said it best: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Scientific research all over the map supports this. An October 2009 study in the Archives of General Psychiatry reported that a Mediterranean-style diet reduced depression in addition to its well-known heart and anti-cancer benefits. They found that fruits, nuts, beans and fat from fish and olive oil all helped beat the blues.

Filling up with fresh fruits and veggies also has another happy side effect: reducing your exposure to mood-busting sugar and processed foods.

4. Up the fish oils.
The long dark winters in Iceland don’t translate into high levels of depression there, and scientists think the reason is in the high-omega-3 fish the locals consume.

For people who are depressed, researchers have found significant improvements in mood after just two weeks of therapy with fish oil.

How does it work? The omega-3 oils reduce depression-causing inflammatory chemicals and improved cellular function, all of which make a happier brain.

5. Feed your microflora, too.
The first-line prescription therapy for depression is a drugs that increases serotonin availability in the brain. Looking at the body as a whole, most serotonin is found in the gut, where it helps signal the movements needed to promote digestion.

We’re designed to make a lot of serotonin ourselves, with the help of foods and the healthy flora in our guts. Supporting that flora with probiotics —found in foods such as sauerkraut, kimchee, live yoghurt and miso — can help make more serotonin available to the whole body, including the brain.

Like fish oils, probiotics also reduce inflammation and oxidative stress that influence depression.

6. Give flower essences a try.
Having flower essences on hand can offer a quick pick-me-up, or support long-term healing. Take four drops as needed, or four times daily in a little water over the longer term. They don’t interact with any other medications, and the only possible concern is a tiny amount of alcohol.

Try Star of Bethlehem for dealing with grief and trauma. Sweet chestnut helps deep, dark despair and hopelessness. Pine relieves guilt. And willow helps when you feel resentful or sorry for yourself. For some sunshine in a bottle, try the Solstice Sun environmental essence from wild Alaska.

7. Learn more.
While there’s no substitute for talking with friends or professional counselors, these books can help you understand what’s going on and offer suggestions for helping yourself.

This psychologist-recommended website links to articles about natural health and a variety of mental health issues.

8. If you need help, get help.
Sometimes the blues are transient, and simple home fixes like these are all you need. But if the darkness persists, remember that you are not alone. Naturopaths and psychologists are an important part of getting better.

If you’re battling the blues this holiday season, be sure to take some moments out to take care of you!

Originally published in Indian Country Today

By Terri Hansen, Environment, Science & Health Writer

Portland, Ore.—When naturopathic physician Dr. Orna Izakson looks at a plant she sees more than its stem, leaves or vibrant flower – she sees medicine. And naturally, she takes a natural approach to flu prevention and hastening a healthy recovery.

“Our bodies are trying to bring us toward health,” she says. “The responses we experience to outside stressors are our body’s intelligent response to that stressor. A fever is an intelligent response: It makes the body more responsive to invaders… and it makes us feel lousy so we slow down and go to bed so that our bodies can heal.”

garlic

So what can you do to stay well this flu season? “Keep things moving,” says Dr. O, as her patients call her. That means drinking clear fluids — especially water — and eating foods that are close to nature. You can get most of the pieces you need in your diet for good health from colorful vegetables, including fiber.

Avoid simple sugars they best as you can; they stun the immune system. “Each handful of berries you give your children is one less Twinkie, it’s a positive step.”

Cigarette smoking depletes vitamins and decreases natural immunity. “You need to cut back, smoke less and what you do smoke should be natural, or if packaged smoke American Spirits,” Dr. O says. “Make up for the extra cost by smoking less.”

Vitamin D, produced naturally in the skin by sun exposure, is critical to your immune system. Deficiencies are epidemic and darker-skinned people are more likely to have low levels. Depending on her patient’s lab assessments of their blood levels, she generally recommends 2,000 to 4,000 iu daily of D-3.

Probiotics support healthy gut bacteria, a barrier between you and the outside world. One 2009 study found regular use of probiotics reduced children’s cold and flu symptoms. Another found probiotics helped elders get more immunity from flu vaccines. Buy probiotics as supplements – acidophilus is one, and find them in traditionally fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchee and uncooked miso.

Herbal steams are an old and effective tradition for any respiratory infection: Mix herbs with boiling water in a bowl and cover for a minute with a towel. Drape the towel over your head and the bowl, close your eyes and breathe the steam through nose and mouth into your nasal passages, throat and lungs to loosen mucous, strengthens mucus membranes, and disinfects your passages. Repeat as needed.

“You can use thyme, pine needles, cedars, eucalyptus, and chaparral. Orange peels can be effective too, but wash them well before using,” Dr. O says. “Talk to the Elders, they often know what’s best to use in your location. It could be herbs from the place your grandparents called home, or you may have a grandma in your head; listen to whose voice is louder.”

Lomatium and osha root are best taken as tea, tincture or by chewing on the root directly. “When you take it internally, you’re taking in the volatile oils. They want to volatize, spread out. They go into the bloodstream, their aromatics bubble out into and through your lungs and mucus, disinfecting.” Think of the flu as leaving junk stuck in your lungs, a perfect spot for breeding bacteria. Herbs move it out, disinfecting from underneath.

Garlic helps to fight many bugs that can make you sick, making it one of Dr. O’s favorites. Raw is best if your stomach tolerates it. Add a chopped clove or two, if you can, to any hot or cold food.

If you get sick in spite of these positive steps call your medical provider.

Home remedies Dr. O suggests for her patients include mustard plasters; to make your own grind yellow (or any) mustard seed and mix with water. Place a brown paper bag on your chest as a barrier, then smooth the mustard plaster on top. Use the plaster two to three times a day. How long you keep it on depends on your comfort level, but check frequently; if the skin starts turning red it’s time to take it off.

The next treatment, like the mustard plaster, moves blood and helps immune cells get to where they’re needed most. Wet a pair of cotton socks with cold water; wring them out thoroughly. Put on well-warmed feet, cover with a pair of dry wool socks and get into a warm bed for the night. You can also do this with a cotton t-shirt and wool sweater.

Bottom line, Dr. O says, is it’s the simplest things that help the most: Eat simply. Exercise moderately. Get plenty of rest. Drink water. Cover your cough. Wash your hands. Get outside and breathe clean air. And find some way to cultivate joy in your life every day. “This is traditional medicine, the best memory of the traditional medicine. It’s practical, it empowers people.”