TREES, PLEASE! The Herbal Grove
- k-england
- Sep 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 2
By Karen England, for Let’s Talk Plants! September 2025.
I have been a regular speaker on the subject of herbs for close to thirty years and in that time, I have always enjoyed surprising audience after audience with just how herbal the entire plant world is and has been for millennia. Seeing people’s minds become “blown” (it looks much like the emoji 🤯) as I give my talks is a perk of my job, it’s better than television. One such subject that I regularly touch on, that of herbal trees, really gets folks thinking outside of the herbal box of what they know to be herbs, such as dill, parsley, basil, cilantro, etc.
In 1995, Mary Forsell wrote the book The Herbal Grove – A Celebration of the Beauty and Mystery of Trees, and I am going to use it as a guide for a list here of the trees grown in San Diego’s herbal grove.
What is an herb?
This is an important question because the answer, although simple, is key to understanding what the herbal grove is; an herb is a useful plant, useful for cooking, crafting and medicine. That definition is wide ranging amongst all of plantdom, going well beyond the few basic herbs that folks know as herbs. With this definition it can be extrapolated that ...
· all vegetables are herbs, but not all herbs are vegetables
· all fruits are herbs, but not all herbs are fruits
· all spices are herbs, but not all herbs are spices
· and so on...
There are over forty trees listed in Mary Forsell’s book and it is not an exhaustive list. Here are my favorite ten and only the tenth one isn’t listed in the book but could have been.
1. Apple – I love growing Dorsett Golden, Malus domestica 'Dorsett Golden', in my Vista, California garden. The trees are easy to grow and the apples are delicious.
2. Bay – Laurus nobilis is more than just a leaf you pull out of beef stew when it’s done. I add several fresh bay leaves along with a cinnamon stick and a star anise to the pot when I am making my morning bowl of Irish oatmeal. Since Irish oats take longer to cook than rolled oats, the herbs get time to season the porridge. I add only butter (Irish of course!) and no sweetener when serving and it’s, as the Irish say, “grand”!
3. Lemon – I love growing Pink Lemonade Lemon, Citrus limon 'Pink Lemonade'. The lavender lemonade that I make with these delicious lemons along with the sweet lavender, Lavandula heterophylla, growing nearby has made me famous. DRINKING IN THE GARDEN: Karen’s Famous Lemonade – Karen England's EdgehillHerbFarm Blog
4. Olive – Olea europaea. Although I am growing an olive tree that was already on my property when we bought the place twenty-five years ago, I have never harvested the olives from it. Doing so is on my someday to-do list...
5. Pomegranate – My cousin, the retired nurseryman, gave me a pomegranate tree, Punica granatum, as a Christmas present one year and it is thriving in my yard with no care. Pomegranates are called a superfood and according to the UCLA health website, Health benefits of pomegranates extend throughout the body | UCLA Health, UCLA Health has been studying pomegranates for almost 20 years, and research has shown pomegranates to have many health benefits, such as:
· Heart health benefits
· Anti-inflammatory properties
· Anti-cancer phytonutrients (similar to those of broccoli)
· Urinary health support
· Digestive health benefits
· Elevated endurance
· A boast in antimicrobial properties that fight oral germs that cause gum disease and bad breath.
· And more
6. Fig – many years ago my neighbor gave me three little cuttings of her delicious fig tree, Ficus carica, and I put them in a pot to see if I could grow them. Two of the cuttings died but one took off and fifteen years later I have a fantastic fig tree planted along my front fence line. Homegrown Fig Newtons anyone? Here's a recipe found on the internet Homemade Fresh Fig Newton Recipe.
7. Date Palm – I am not a fan of palms but I do love dates, so I am including this herb in the list. Since I’m not growing a date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, and I don’t know anyone who is, I just buy dates at the Vista Farmer’s Market. Last year I bought a tee shirt while visiting Dateland, Arizona that really attracts attention when I wear it.
8. Pine – I am growing several pines; Monterey Pine, Pinus radiata, Stone Pine, Pinus pinea, Canary Island Pine, Pinus canariensis, and Japanese Black Pine, Pinus thunbergii. I once took a “make and take” pine needle basket class at the San Diego Botanic Garden with grand ideas of making baskets from my various pine needles to sell with my handmade “Piney Woods” bars of soap. I failed the class and never completed the basket. Oh well.
9. Oak – I have three oaks growing on my property, two coast live oaks, Quercus agrifolia, that we planted and one volunteer oak that looks like it might be a corker! (Well, you know, it might be a cork oak! Quercus suber. Time will tell. Talk about a quintessential useful plant...)
10. Persimmon – I think I have the most prolific Hachiya persimmon tree, Diospyros kaki 'Hachiya', in the world, and those of you who have gotten persimmons from me over the years might agree. The crop of fruit each year from my one and only persimmon tree seems endless, and I jokingly call it the “zucchini of fruits” because I leave bags of the fruit at people’s doors and run away before they can stop me. The tree came with my property and is now the apple of my eye (apologies to my actual apple tree). In Japan I am told they make a tea of the new leaves in the springtime, but I have yet to try persimmon leaf tea. Yet another thing on my future to-do list.
In closing, a quote from The Herbal Grove -
The benefits of herbal trees “... come to us in the form of fruits, nuts, bark, leaves and flowers harvested and used in cooking, for healing, and as cosmetics.”
Is your mind blown?
