MountainGardensHerbs.com
Title
Mountain Gardens / Home
Description
For the past 25 years, I have been engaged in developing a Paradise Garden on several acres of mountain woodland in western N. Carolina. For me, Paradise Garden is both a place to live and a way to live, and, above all 'visionary ecological theater.' I am trying to act on deep instincts and archetypal images related to human habitat and niche as a way of providing a sustainable values system with sufficient appeal to challenge the dominant consumer culture. The philosophy of this project is outlined in the Paradise Gardening article; it is the mother of all the other projects here.
Almost from the beginning, an aspect of this project has been the botanical garden of useful plants (in accordance with one possible definition of Paradise: a garden in which everything you need is there for the taking). An extensive research project was undertaken to identify the thousand 'most useful' plants which might grow in this bioregion. Acquiring the plants has been another big project: since many of them are not 'in the trade' I turned to exchanges with a network of private collectors and eventually botanic gardens worldwide. I originally began saving seed in order to participate in exchanges, but enjoy it so much that it has expanded into a business - see the Seed List; for current offerings.
Originally, medicinal was just another category of useful plants to me; but starting about ten years ago it became increasingly obvious that there was a crying need for medicinal plant nurseries in this country and that, based on my collection and location (this area has traditionally been the heartland of the medicinal herb business in N. America), Mountain Gardens was an obvious candidate for the job, so I began to make medicinal herbs a specialty.
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