Contest 2: The Winner is …

By Paris Wolfe, Blogmaster, The Herb Society of America

In September we relaunched the “Show us Your Herb Garden” Contest. Folks were invited to send herbal planting efforts. Names were placed in a “hat” and a winner was selected. Winner Susan Maasch in Bangor, Maine, will receive a copy of the book What Can I Do with My Herbs by Judy Barrett.

About her herb garden Maasch writes:

“My herb garden is right outside my kitchen door. I focus on culinary herbs which we eat all summer and early fall and then dry or freeze for all winter long. We have four kinds of thyme, four kinds of sage, garlic chives, summer savory, parsley, oregano, basil and 40 kinds of garlic from all over the world.

We grow lemon verbena and different mints to use for tea. I use the lavender for my chai tea and to make lavender cookies. The garden is my meditation and joy giving me great flavor and gifts to give others.”

Maasch started herb gardening about 46 years ago when urban and suburban kids were inspired by the back to the land movement, holistic living, Earth Day, and “general hippie values” of the 1970s. She hasn’t stopped.

“I love the labor, the earth in my hands, the rewards of growing my own food and herbs including the tea we drink,” she says. “I always say the garden is a visually beautiful place to be and when I enter it I leave the world and all its troubles behind. I am somehow transported to the moment and a place of peace in a way nothing else does for me.”