Hello, it's Tinisha Spain, host of Mid-American Gardener.

Thanks so much for joining us for another episode this week.

We are in Vermilion County at the Bunker Hill Herb Garden in Kennekuk County Park.

And man, this place is incredible.

So many herb gardens here.

We've got biblical herbs.

We've got herbs that you can use to die close, culinary herbs, all the herbs.

So let's find Kasi and her team and get started.

[MUSIC] And now I am joined by Kasi Mitchell.

So you're one of the head gardeners out here at the Herb Garden.

Tell us a little bit about you and how long you've been out here.

Well, I went through the master gardener training back in 2012, graduated that year.

Great program.

I don't live very far from here, so this was a natural place for me to volunteer.

There are also gardens behind this at the Atwood house, and I helped over there for a while until this garden took over all my time.

We came into this garden and there was another person in charge of it and she decided she was going to retire a couple years after we started.

So another master gardener, Harry Bogen and I took it on and the first year we took it on, we found theme beds, we decided to make theme beds.

We also were able to, we contacted all American selections and we became an All American Selection display garden.

And every year they send us seeds and little plants in the mail.

And then we get to display those in the garden.

And if you look around, you'll see some of the signs say All American Selection.

Those are seeds that we've been sent every year.

Now you mentioned the different types, the themes, the bed themes out here, which I think is so cool.

Walk us through the different types of beds that you have out here and kind of you guys, how you landed on those themes.

Well.

Actually I went to an herb fest, I think it was in Noblesville, Indiana, and they talked about having different themes there like tea beds.

And so I said, let's do that.

Let's make our bed.

We had a lot of mint growing out here when we first started.

I mean it took over.

Yes, as it does, we got rid of the mint and went to the theme beds.

Our first theme bed was the Native American bed and it's the one behind us over there.

And those are all plants that are used in some way by Native Americans.

There's a map in each mailbox and it gives a map of the plants layout in the bed.

It also tells what the plants were used for.

And so that was our jump off point.

The next year we went to a biblical theme bed and it's behind you, which.

Is very unique.

It is.

And it has plants that are mentioned in the Bible and it has the map on it shows what chapter and verse in the Bible.

The plants are mentioned.

So a lot of people are interested in that.

And then we put in two medicinal beds and there the two over there.

And there are so many plants that are medicinal that it took up two beds.

And a lot of people don't know that.

So it's really cool that you have that out here for people to experience that.

Yeah, thank you.

There's a map over there too that tells how it's used, but there's also a warning on the map telling people, please don't use anything if you don't know.

Exactly.

What the effect or what it'll be.

Or consult your doctor first.

These three are culinary beds.

And.

Those are plants that you use for cooking and eating and tasting.

And then the last bed that we put in was the dye bed.

And the dye bed is that one.

And it's probably my favorite bed of all of 'em because of the colors.

And those are plants that are used for dyeing fabrics and wools, especially back in the day.

I was just going to ask which one your favorite was, but you told us the dye bed.

Yep.

I like the the dye bed.

Now what do you want people to do?

Is this open to the public or can folks come in here and browse and pick?

Do you want them to pick and take things?

Absolutely.

We want people to come in and visit.

We're kind of a hidden jewel out here.

Even people that live in Danville don't know that this park is out here.

They're shocked when they come out for an event and they find this little beauty out here.

We do invite people to come and sample and snip and smell.

We also let people come out and if you need a particular herb or a plant for cooking or any purpose, we invite you to do that.

We ask that you leave enough for others.

Don't take the whole plant.

Unfortunately, we've had people do that before, dig up a plant and take it.

And it helps us out when people snip back the plants because then they get the blooms off of them and they branch out a little bit more and get bigger.

So Stevia is a very common plant.

People like to get snip it a lot.

And another one's this poor little bay laurel right here.

That's a popular.

One.

Once she gets going, once she gets some more rain on her and sun, she'll pop up there and there'll be plenty of bay leaves that people can harvest off of her.

We.

Don't use pesticides out here.

It's pretty organic.

And it's every is so beautifully manicured and it looks so great.

So I'm assuming there's a lot of volunteer help out here?

We have about 12 people if everybody shows up all at once.

Wow.

And regularly, I would say five, five or six of us out here.

So we try to work our work mornings are Wednesday mornings.

We come out early in the morning, especially when it's going to be hot out.

We usually get out here at seven or so and we'll work for two, three hours and weed and water if we need to and then go on until next week.

And it takes care of itself.

Now, why do you think it's important to have an herb garden this size available to the community?

What do you think?

It's an educational aspect.

There are plants in here.

We've had notes.

People put notes in our mailboxes and that are around the park and we've had notes from people saying, I've never seen this plant before and I've looked for it forever.

Or somebody else say, I snipped a certain plant, I'm going to take it home and try cooking at it.

Or So educational gives people an idea of what some things look like or.

Okay.

Now if this piques someone's interest, this tour and kind of seeing everything that's out here, what should I bring?

If I was going to come out here and just kind of collect a few things, what should I bring in my basket.

My scissors or snippers?

Yep.

Yep.

That's what you'd need.

All the plants are labeled so people can, they know what they're getting.

As the plants have grown, some of the signs are hidden.

So I was trying to pull some of them out where you could see 'em this morning.

But there's so many plants that you can experiment with.

John uses, he's over there now picking little pieces of savory, I think.

And he uses the savory from out here.

What he makes his liver sausage.

His famous.

Liver sausage.

We've.

Talked about that on the show a few times.

Have you tasted it?

I have not.

You have to be brave and taste it.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

With the fresh herbs.

Yeah, he picks.

I think summers savory don't you, John.

Wonderful.

Okay.

Well we're going to go take a look at some of the plants out here.

We're going to catch up with John and just show folks around and give 'em a little taste of what's out here.

So thank you so much for inviting us out.

Yeah, thank you for coming.

So you mentioned earlier that this is your favorite plant in the entire bed.

Yes, it is.

I worked really hard to get this big.

It's been a little teeny tiny plant since we put it in there.

This is called flax and it's in both our biblical bed and our dye bed because back in the day, the Egyptian times, maybe even before they used the flax plant to make linen.

But what I really like is the blue, the flowers.

It's really showing off.

That is gorgeous.

And it's been blooming for about a month.

That's.

Really, really.

Pretty.

Another interesting plant right next to it.

This is the oldest plant in the garden.

This is a garden sage.

It's been here through a lot of transitions where this garden was just holes in the ground and then it had railroad ties around it and now it has stone beds, but we've left it here in this spot.

Wow.

Sometimes it struggles a little bit this year it's doing great.

But it's the granddaddy.

The granddaddy of the plants out here.

So the.

Original garden out here, you said was, it started in the nineties.

The original garden wasn't here, it was up by the That's right.

Not education center now.

The office where the office is now.

And when they started moving all the buildings in out here into the Bunker Hill historic area, they brought the herb garden out here too.

And originally it was just some piles of dirt on the ground and they stuck our herbs in it.

And they tried to use herbs that were period, back to the time of the buildings, got a little bit fancy one year and put railroad tie beds around.

And she had them in this configuration.

And then they got a grant in 2012 and they put the stone blocks all around the beds.

And we made raised beds a lot easier for people to get into and garden.

A lot easier to keep things weeded.

And here we are today.

Very nice.

And this is the granddaddy, huh?

Survived all the moves?

Yes, it has.

From.

The pile of dirt to the.

Brick.

Bed.

Well, I don't know that they moved it.

I think they just kept it here and as they built around it, that's really around it.

Really?

Yeah.

Really cool.

So it's sage was a biblical plant.

It's one that's mentioned back in the Bible.

And I like the texture of this one here.

I know you said it's a little wild and needs.

Haircut, but.

It's really pretty.

This is Tanzy and you can see that it's kind of taken over this bed.

This is a bed we didn't get to this year to get things hemmed back a little bit.

Occasionally we'll have to go in and take bunch out.

And this year or next year, I think about half of it's going to go.

Horse radish is like that too.

It gets crazy now.

You eat this.

I don't think you do.

I think it's a scent.

I think the scent of it.

Oh.

I was going to say I can smell something over here.

Smells really beautiful.

Yeah, it's got an unusual scent.

Oh, it's an insect repellent.

It's a strewing herb.

They would put it on the floors of the buildings and it would help keep the insects and the mice and things away.

Nice.

Very nice.

So they put the fresh leaves and the dried leaves like that.

Okay, wonderful.

So now we're at the dye bed.

Right?

Tell us a little bit about this.

Oh, when you tell people we have a dye bed out here, they kind of look at you a little bit strange.

D-I-E or.

D-Y-E.

It's D-Y-E.

And this, all of the plants in this bed are plants that are used some way in dying fabric or wool.

We still have organizations that will come out and harvest some of the plants and they'll use them when they do demonstrations for dying.

All of our beds, theme beds have mailboxes in them and in the mailbox there's a map of the plants that are in each bed.

And there's also a list on the back of the map that tells either how the plant was used in this particular bed.

It tells what colors would come from each of the plants.

So some of the plants in here, the big yellow one back there is a type of chamomile and it likes to spread.

It's pretty invasive.

We have some Holly hawks here that actually have black flowers on 'em and those would be used for dying things.

Also, this little gal here, lady's bedstraw.

And we've hemmed her back quite a bit this year.

She's having a good year.

Yes, she is having a good year.

She was even having better year.

She went back to the Hollyhocks.

This is unusual because not only is it a dye plant, but it is also one of those plants that would be used.

They'd stuff mattresses with it when it was dried out and it would stay lofty and it would, the green part of it, it would stay lofty.

And so it's called lady's bedstraw because they would use it for mattresses also, I'm sure would keep away bugs.

Interesting.

I love this.

So what about the Indian blanket flower?

Indian blanket flowers.

You can get a brown color dye out of those.

So we have one there and we have another one back behind it that has come up, volunteer and good place for it.

It's doing well.

The black Hollyhocks will bloom next year.

They're biennial.

So this year they come up and have all the leaves on them and next year they'll shoot up a big stock of black flowers.

Nice.

So it'll be pretty, we have black irises in there.

The irises have already bloomed.

They had a really deep, deep purple black color on them.

Wow.

Now have you made anything with any of the flowers out of here?

Any paints or dyes or?

No, I haven't.

But when we get kids coming through here, the indigo in this bed is one of the plants that I like to show to the kids because if you take a leaf off the plant and crumble up and hold it, it'll start turning blue.

And indigo was the plant that they used to dye blue jeans.

Well, they can't keep up with enough indigo to dye blue jeans now, so they use a chemical dye for it, but they still have the plant around.

That's so.

Neat to learn the history of these things, like who would've ever thought that they stuffed mattresses with this plant?

Yeah.

Wonderful.

This is the indigo plant that I talked about.

It is a Japanese pink indigo, but it actually gives you a blue dye.

And if you look at the leaves, some of them are starting to turn a reddish blue color.

And if you pick a leave off and I like to show this to the kids and crush it up after a while it'll start turning blue.

It's not real, real fast.

It won't happen real fast, but you'll see it sooner or later.

Wow.

Wonder is that like something in the oxidation process or something?

The science of it.

All is.

Fascinating.

I'm sure it is.

I'm sure.

So.

But this is where we got our blue jeans.

This is what they use to dive blue jeans with.

Yeah, they used to grow fields and fields of it.

And John said they still have fields of it up in Canada that they use.

That is so neat.

It's related to a smart weed plant and smart weeds are the bane of farmers around here.

But.

I'm going to tear one off for comparison.

You can see it's starting to get a little bit of blue hair.

Oh.

Yeah, I do.

I see the streaking right there.

It'll turn really blue after a few minutes.

As promised, we found John Bodensteiner here in the garden.

Is there a garden in Vermilion County that you don't work in?

Oh yeah, there has to be.

I do work in a few of 'em and it's what I enjoy doing.

It is.

And.

You're so good at it.

John.

I've done it now I'm on my 32nd year of being a master gardener here in Vermilion County and doing the TV show.

Yes.

Yes.

And.

Working in the greenhouse.

Greenhouse.

And at the library.

And the radio show and.

At the discovery garden, John is just the hardest working man in.

Gardening.

So in fact, I'm going to the discovery garden tonight.

So.

Never a dull moment.

So we talked earlier about people being able to harvest things and sample and enjoy some of the herbs from this garden.

And so for folks who may never have collected herbs before, we want to have manners.

We want to respect the garden and save some for others.

So let's talk about how to respectfully harvest some things and pick a few of your faves and show us how to take some herbs home.

Respectfully.

The main thing is if you're coming out here to collect our scope wearing a plastic bag, they're airtight.

If you forget about 'em, they will rot almost immediately.

Bring a paper bag, they breathe and if the plants sweat, paper absorbs it and then it evaporates.

So that's one of the main things.

The other thing is to bring a good tool to cut them with.

And what you want to do is look for something that's healthy.

We've got some Bee balm here and you want to go down to where there's a leaf node.

And as you can see here, I could do here too is that you have two new leaves here.

And so if I would trim right above that, now I've doubled the number of stems that are coming out of that plant.

And another thing, you want to make sure that when you look on the underside, because insects love to height underneath the leaves, you want to make sure that they are nice and healthy.

Smell it, make sure that that's something that you really want.

This is bee balm.

It's also called monarda.

It's Oswego tea.

There's so many different names for it, but it makes a wonderful tea.

Wonderful.

Okay.

And so it's one of those fragrant herbs that, and so it depends on what you're cutting.

This is French tarragon.

Now you can see here this got a whole bunch of flowers on it.

That's not going to be the one that I'm going to want to pick for cooking.

What I'm going to want to do is go down here where the flowers haven't developed yet.

And this is French tarragon.

It's got a mild licorice scent and flavor.

Oh.

That's the one I nibbled on earlier.

Yes, but it has an anise or, but that's another thing.

If it is flowering, usually the leaves underneath that the plant has.

The energy.

Is gone.

It's putting its energy into the flour.

The leaves will have a little bit less oil and so they won't be as strong.

Noted.

Right over here is my favorite.

That is winter savory.

And then right next to it is summer savory.

And I use a lot of it.

I come out here, I make liver sausage, which is my grandfather's old recipe.

He brought it from Germany from his grandfather.

And so I'm the only one in the family that still is making it.

I've had a couple of classes with my sisters and brothers up in North Dakota and they are starting to make, I've got one sister that's making it now and my brother is also starting.

But to find that the winter savory is not quite as strong, but it's a perennial.

Alright, now show us how to take a cutting off of that.

Okay.

Like I was saying earlier, two of my favorites are the savories, which I use in my liver sausages.

And this is a good example of what I would be looking for.

This is the summer savory here.

And it is really nice right now in that it is not blooming at all.

And so it is at its height as far as its flavor and aroma.

And that's what I'm really after is the fragrance and the aroma in these plants.

I love to use fresh because it shows up so much nicer and stronger in the sausage or whatever you're making.

Whatever you're cooking, you want to use about a third of what it says for dry.

In other words, if it says a tablespoon full of fresh you want to use, you want to use a third as much if it's dry because all the water is gone and you're just using the herb for the winter savory, this is one that I probably would not use.

Now if you have this at home, what you should be doing is coming out here and unless you're saving it for seed, is trim this back and get rid of the flowers again, like I showed on the Oswego tea or the bee balm.

When I cut this, I'm now going to get, you can see here, there's two cuttings.

If I was to cut this here, now I've got this branch and this branch coming.

But the winter savory is a perennial.

The summer savory is an annual.

So that means I'd have to plant the summer savory.

And they do have just almost an indistinguishable difference.

But there is a difference.

The summer savory to me is a little bit stronger than the winter savory, but you can see the winter savory is huge.

And so I can use that.

And when I use that, it shows up so much nicer in the final product that you get the nice little green leaves.

And again, you would cut it up, probably not use the stems when you're harvesting, what you would do is just take and pull back.

And now all I've got is the leaves and then I just discard this.

This sometimes can be a little woody.

Lavender has to be one of my favorite scents.

You just want to dabble a little bit on you.

It's good stuff.

And it's funny that you say that because we had the Schlarman kids out here for a field trip and I was talking about how it is a relaxing, especially at bedtime.

And so I gave a sample to all of the kids to smell.

Well, the guys all wanted to have their own cutting, but I said, if you take it home and put it under your pillowcase and then tap it a little bit before you go to sleep, you're going to sleep so much better.

It's amazing how many of them said they slept so well.

But it's one of those things that you don't really think about an herb being relaxing.

But there are others like chamomile that you would actually make a tea out of and it's a relaxing herb and you take that at bedtime.

And then also the flowers of lavender.

A lot of people have these sachets in their drawers.

Closets, drawers.

Yeah.

It has a slow, again, you don't put it in a plastic bag.

I want to really stress not to put herbs, plants in plastic, herbs and plastic.

Do not get along.

They do not.

And if you're mailing something to like the plant clinic at the university, don't put it in plastic, put in a paper bag and mail it to 'em that way.

And any questions you ever have on any of the herbs, if you're out here, call the extension office here in Vermilion County and we'll get back to you.

Or the people there are very knowledgeable too on this.

Absolutely.

This, I just was fascinated with lavender in that it has so many different uses.

It's making a huge splash right now in the coffee world.

I've seen a lot of lavender lattes.

Ice creams.

Yes.

So it is one of those, you don't want to overwhelm it, you just want that.

The essence.

The umami.

That.

Umami of a presence of it.

Yeah.

That's just something really special.

But what is it?

Yes.

And you keep 'em guessing.

You can't do that either.

But this is one of my favorites also.

And especially the kids.

I just was overwhelmed with how they took to it and they wanted and they had a positive reaction of it and.

They'll remember that.

And.

Hopefully they'll grow herbs and gardening when they grow up.

Have lavender satchels in their closets one day.

Well, John, thank you so much for coming out.

You're welcome, and I'm sure you'll pop up at another garden that we're at soon.

So I appreciate your time.

And that is the show for this week.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Big thanks to the folks here at Bunker Hill Herb Garden in Kennekuk County Park, in Vermilion County.

If you're in the area, stop by, have a look, have a smell, have a taste, have a sample.

But this is a really, really lovely place to take in if you are in the Vermilion County area.

And if you've got a garden that we just have to see, send it into us at yourgarden@gmail.com.

And who knows, we might just come and see it.

If you've got questions, you can send those into us as well.

Search for us on socials.

Just look for Mid-American Gardener.

Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time.

Good night.