Image Galleries: Herbs

See also : Visitor Information : Annual Trials

Herbs are generally appreciated for their culinary, medicinal, dye, or other "useful" properties. In our garden, we are also concerned with the ornamental appeal of over 350 kinds of non-woody plants that possess herbal properties. You will find well-known herbs with well-known uses as well as see unusual varieties with obscure herbal histories. While some of the plants in this garden are well-known landscape favorites, others are important herbs that are not often used as landscape plants. A few plants in this garden are "herbal" in a rather loose sense of the word and may be highly bred cultivars that bear little resemblance to their original "weedy" ancestors. Some plants in this garden have become mainstays and are retained on a permanent basis, while others area on trial for the first time and may be removed if it is determined that they have little garden charisma.

The Herb Garden was installed in 1996 as a class project and at the entrance has the letters “OHLD” imprinted in the concrete. This stands for Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design, the name of the Plant Sciences department at the time. Many of the handprints of the students who built the garden can still be found in the lower part of the Garden. Maintenance of the Herb Garden is often taken on by an individual student and has also been adopted in the past by the Smokey Mountain Herbal Society.

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