photo by orna izakson.

New Year’s day was as one of those perfect Pacific Northwest winter days — 45 degrees, misty and soft. The kind of day that smells and feels like earth.

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

Still, it was a day to survey. And one of the bright points was indefatigable thyme, sprightly in the day’s gloom at the base of a fig tree.

Herbalists often like to play around with favorite herbs lists: If you only had three (or five, or ten) herbs to work with, which would you choose? On my lists, thyme always shows up. It’s incredibly easy to grow, tastes fantastic and makes powerful medicine.

In the kitchen

Most people know thyme (Thymus vulgaris) as a classic salad-dressing herb. It’s a staple of Mediterranean cooking and comes in every prepackaged herb rack. Tossing thyme onto sliced vegetables before baking automatically elevates your meal from food to cuisine. My mother —neither an herbalist nor a gardener — says, “everything is better with herbs on it.” She was talking primarily about thyme.

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 surprisingly yummy, with a lovely, bright flavor.

Thyme’s medicine

As its most history of culinary use suggests, thyme helps support digestion. The compounds that give the plant its strong smell make your gastrointestinal tract do its job more efficiently. Thyme also 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 an 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.

Brand-new research also suggests thyme is a potent anti-inflammatory. It’s cited as potentially helpful in preventing diabetes, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. But as inflammation lies at the heart of many health problems, that list is surely longer.

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 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 that 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, its feeds good bugs like 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!

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.

My favorite seed catalog came in today’s mail.

What’s new for 2010: organic Floriani red flint corn, green meat radish, Bolivian rainbow pepper, purple pac choy, ruby streaks mustard.

This is why 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 better. As a naturopath I always recommend that people 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!

NB: A version of this story originally appeared at WellWire.com.

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.”