About the Wylde Garden by Michel Montvert
I discovered herbs as I began learning about organic gardening in the early 70s. As I discovered all the amazing heirloom vegetables, I was encountering info about herbs, culinary & medicinal, and was instantly fascinated. I had learned about the need to preserve the environment, and I'd spent time alone in natural places and found the earth to be a propitious ambience in which to think and act. Imagine that! I discovered I lived on the earth!
In my first gardening effort, I planted a few vegetables but also comfrey, hyssop, thyme and dill. I began to read everything I could find on herbs as well as organic growing. When these herbs had grown, I had an minor accident which scraped some skin off my hip. I mashed up comfrey and hyssop and thyme and applied them in a poultice. The next morning there was new skin over the entire wound. I, for one, was convinced!
I acquired plant guides and began searching in the woods for useful plants, first in Missouri, then in Washington, then in California. I was feeling such, shall I say camaraderie? from the trees, that I realized before reading about it that I had to take care with the plant stands, not offend them. At UC-Santa Cruz I studied global agrarian issues, and then spent time in Guatemala observing Mayan horticulture and was taught by a priest (chimán) about traditional herbal and spiritual practices. This complemented perfectly what I'd been learning from Western herbal and gardening sources, gave me additional perspective and brought me even closer to feeling integrated with nature.
And so I spent years growing vegetables & herbs & fruit for sale, working with whom I could to encourage others to grow organically and to seek healing from the earth, healing that went along with a rediscovered awareness of ourselves as part of the earth, of the earth as our home, something many of our ancestors had lost along the way.
Over the decades I've managed orchards organically, grown many varieties of vegetables, cultivated & gathered herbs, and sold to natural food markets, farmers markets and online. Now allegedly "retired", I've slowed down a bit, still maintaining a vegetable garden to feed the 2 of us (Ellen has also been an avid herb & vegetable gardener for decades, and derives much satisfaction working also on processing herbs; they just make us both feel good!).
Anyone aware of plants and earth as we are knows that the interaction is mutual, the action as well, they are aware of us as we are of them, and they are ready and very willing to cooperate with us in our collective global attempts to restore sanity to human ecology, to restore balance which humans have a great capacity to disrupt if behaving and thinking badly.
We seek now to expand our outreach, to move even more perfectly-grown & dried herbs to people, as much as we can produce. As we're now in our final chapters in these husks, we hope to manifest positive influence in these matters as much as we are able. And so, we want to:
1. Sell herbs.
2. Contribute to consciousness raising as possible.
3. Continue to learn, ourselves, right to the end.
Here's the circular herb garden being created, oriented to the directions, and some of the herbs which then emerged from it.
ETHICAL WILDCRAFTING
We also wildcraft some items. We do always evaluate the stand to ensure we are not damaging its viability. We gather only in clean areas. We do not take endangered plants (ginseng, goldenseal, etc.). We enhance the habitat when possible, for example, removing any invasive species which are encroaching. We follow all the standard recommendations for taking root material, leaving the crown, taking care not to remove any of the grandmother/father plants. One of our guiding principles, in addition to spreading herbs to people, is to avoid harming the environment, including plant stands. We're on the side who wishes to restore and preserve the earth, not "mine" it.
For information our herbs, our business/institutional garden consulting, or any herbal interactions, write us at:
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