Charlotte Scott

Chives: The Smallest Member of the Onion Family Chives are the smallest cultivated species in the onion genus, yet they’ve earned a place in kitchen gardens across an enormous stretch of the globe, prized for a mild, grassy onion flavor and delicate purple blooms that double as genuine garden ornamentals. Few herbs manage to be … Read more

The Herb With a Dragon’s Name and a Split Identity Tarragon is a perennial herb best known for the sweet, anise-like flavor that anchors classic French cooking, yet the plant sold under that single common name actually covers a genuinely confusing split identity. The variety capable of real culinary distinction is sterile and can’t be … Read more

Tarragon, botanically Artemisia dracunculus, is a perennial herb in the sunflower family, native across a genuinely enormous range spanning Eurasia and North America, from dry meadows and roadsides in Europe all the way to Siberia and disturbed habitats throughout much of the United States and Canada. Despite that sprawling wild distribution, only one specific cultivated … Read more

Before you plant a single tarragon seed or cutting, there’s one fact worth knowing that trips up more gardeners than almost anything else about this herb: true French tarragon, the kind prized for its sweet, anise-like flavor in classic French cooking, cannot be grown from seed at all. If you buy a packet of tarragon … Read more

Tamarind is a large, long-lived tropical tree, and most of the real work involved in growing one happens early on: choosing the right site, watering consistently while it establishes, and training a strong branch structure while the tree is still young. Once established, tamarind settles into a genuinely low-maintenance tree, and the University of Florida … Read more

Ashwagandha is one of the more forgiving medicinal herbs a home gardener can grow, especially compared to a genuinely demanding crop like wasabi. Native to the dry, stony ground of India, the Middle East, and North Africa, it’s built for neglect rather than pampering, and most of the mistakes gardeners make with it come from … Read more

Wasabi, scientifically Eutrema japonicum, is a perennial herb in the mustard family that grows naturally along cold mountain streams, and cultivation of the plant in Japan is believed to have begun roughly 400 years ago. In the wild, the species occurs across a considerable stretch of territory, from Russia’s Sakhalin Island in the north down … Read more

Wasabi has a genuine reputation as one of the hardest commercial crops to grow successfully, and that reputation holds up even for a home gardener working on a much smaller scale. Its native habitat, cold, shaded mountain streams in Japan, is about as far from an average backyard as a growing condition gets, so success … Read more

Japan’s Most Difficult and Misunderstood Crop The wasabi plant is responsible for one of the most recognizable flavors in the world, yet the vast majority of people who’ve eaten “wasabi” at a sushi restaurant have never actually tasted it. Genuine wasabi is notoriously difficult and expensive to grow, and most of what gets served as … Read more

Ashwagandha is the common name most often applied to Withania somnifera, a small evergreen shrub in the nightshade family that’s been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. But “ashwagandha” sits within a larger genus, Withania, which Kew’s Plants of the World Online currently recognizes as containing 19 accepted species, while other published reviews … Read more