The Meditative Gardener

I love my herb garden most of all, and i collect herb plants. Some years ago, i found horehound.

When i was young, Dad would occasionally bring horehound candy home--an old-fashioned hard brown candy (i.e., mostly sugar) in the shape of a lozenge. Horehound is a bitter herb used in traditional cough medicines and for upper respiratory conditions.

A few years after i planted horehound in my herb garden, i found horehound seedlings sprouting nearby. I potted up the extras, but since gardeners don't know what horehound is, they didn't take them. I couldn't give the horehound away.

This fall, i decided to plant the ruffly gray-green foliage in the white garden. It looks rather nice as an edging. Conveniently, it has small white flowers.


Sometimes we can't give away our advice about the spiritual path that has remedied our dis-ease. All we can do is "show and don't tell." "Show, don't tell" is not only excellent advice for writers, it's also good advice for those of us with a spiritual practice. We act with kindness and integrity, and wait for people to ask us, "Hey, what's that attractive plant growing there on the edge of your garden?"