grandmama you must be in a less hot and humid zone 7 than me. The only luck I've had with silver mound is in nearly total shade here. That poor thing looks like an old roadkill after 400+ cars have run over it, only a bit of the fur is left. I bought 10 of them and lost them all except one plant that is in full shade. Its always for sale in nursery's but I never see nice clumps growing anywhere around here.......hum, I wonder why? On the other hand, I saw an entire front yard the other day that was at least 3/4's taken up with Powis Castle. The people seemed to be using it as a lawn replacement.... I dug up a wild silver one--a prairie sage in Kansas-- obviously a member of the mugwort family. We are talking serious world domination on that one, much more aggressive than Silver King underground. One I like is the annual, Sweet Annie if you cut it before it seeds. I absolutely love the smell and it makes great wreaths and a nice plant (in my eyes anyway which tends toward wild and rangy at times) I know green mugwort is a plant that originated in Gardener's Hell from everything I have read and its not even silver, makes you wonder why would anyone want to plant that? But, people have. I also read that planting Wormwood is just asking for trouble but even the ones that spread have been easily manageable for me because you can practically just pull it out of the ground after a decent rain.

I am from south western coast of India and I remember my mom and her friends / cousins using these leaves ( as well as marjoram and Artemisia pallens ) in making garlands. The leaves are similar to chrysanthemum leaves, but the fragrance is very different. The common name they used was 'manapatri' They also mentioned that it had some medicinal properties.

mugwort is a wonderful culinary, medicinal, and recreational herb. My experiences with it started as my misunderstanding and thought that it may be a substitute for marihuana, however not really mimicing marihuana well, I found that it was a good herb in it's own rite. I have found that Mugwort's flavor goes good in numerous types of food. Caution should be used hen cooking with mugwort because of the consituent thujone, which exists in mugwort at a realitively safe recreational level, and as such, care should be used to use it at a dose that will impart it's sweet, mildly licorice like flavor but not enough to impart it's medicinal or recreational qualities, which I find that anywhere between an eight to 1 whole leaf is a good amount for this. I sometimes enjoy mugwort in scrambled eggs, and I have also heard good things about it's use to flavor rice. It's medicinal qualities are inducing lucid dreaming, and to an extent inhibiting and sometimes killing intestinal parasites. I particularly enjoy mugwort for it's recreational qualities though. The methods for ingesting for this purpose can be eating the herb (usually at quantities over 1 leaf) making mugwort tea, or smoking mugwort. It has a light and uplifting, somewhat euphoric high (around the same level of euphoric potentail as raw cacao (chocolate) beans, and mild hallucinations. The hallucinations are usually nothing more than seeing colors a little more 'vividly', sometimes vision distortion (ie- 'wide angle lens/fish eye vision) but sometimes, at higher doses, can cause either psychedelic hallucinations (seeing colors that are not part of a real object, seeing objects that aren't there but resemble objects that are) or sometimes delusions (seeing something that isn't there but looks real enough to make telling the difference difficult, this is rare and only happens at very high doses). Don't get too over excited or nervous though, mugwort, at least at reasonable definitions of high doses, can't cause hallucinogenic fantasies, or 'trips' as some people call them, and you will remain in reality, just random and non-overwhelming visual intrest capturing, short lived oddities, and again, only at high doses. for some reason, mugwort that has turned orange in the fall is more likely to cause visuals, and mugwort that has turned predominately purple for the fall tends to offer more of a strictly mild stimulant effect, even if that same plant in the summer was one that produced visuals. I do not know the reason why some mugwort I find that some mugwort becomes orange, and others purple, or what the corralation with the distinction of recreational values is. Other then that, Mugwort is a stimulant (although obviously not a strong one because people can sleep and enjoy the dreaming effects. Also, it is important to note that, as I have found to be the case, plants that produce an herby flavor don't cause the dreaming effect, and those that have a licorice-y are more likely to cause both the dreaming effects and the psychedelic effects. This seems to have nothing to do with the color changing phenominon in the fall as plants that have even the most pronounced psychedelic/dreaming effects that have a strong licorice-y flavor can become purple in the fall and have only a strictly stimulant effect, and vice versa. The usual dose of mugwort (1-2 cigarettes, a cup of mugwort tea, 2-3 leaves chewed and swallowed) usually only produces the stimulant effect with a relaxed, mildly spacey under tone, which is quite pleasant. Sorry if I blathered or didn't make sense, I actually just harvested a bunch of mugwort earlier, and the thujone or other undiscovered recreational element appears to (and this is not the first time this has happened) be able to be aabsorbed through the skin, and since I can estimate that I handled probably a quarter pound of it, I am at the point of having hallucinations (I looked over and my window was the garage door for a second) plus I am very tired. Hope the information was somewhat useful. Peace, and have fun growing/harvesting mugwort!

Lovage is a tall perennial herb that has a strong celery taste and can be added to your recipes. It is a nice green backdrop at the back of the garden. Some parsley in the front. Replant parsley each year. It is a biennial, a 2 year life cycle, but I've never had it do anything the second year. Sage is a beautiful green-grey plant with fuzzy leaves. It is a perennial, wonderful with chicken and even in tea. The violet-blue flowers (color varies) are beautiful and great bumble-bee magnets. Oregano is very hardy and tolerates (actually it kind of required) very regular harvesting. It is a perennial with pink-lavender flowers. Basil, too many varieties to count and wonderful in pestos, thai cuisine, tomato sauces, fresh mozarella/tomato/basil salad and more. Easy to start in-doors and transplant out or direct sow if conditions allow. An annual, if you are wondering. Chives, a wonderful perennial onion relative. Lovely topped on eggs, baked potatoes, in salads, etc. They have lavender flowers which are edible too. Garlic is wonderful addition. They bloom white (the classic ball-like blooms of the allium family) and can be harvested for bulbs or greens. The hardneck varieties, as noted in other posts, are the most hardy. Some nasturiums. They are annual flowers but they are lovely and the flowers and leaves taste wonderful and peppery in salads. Depending on the variety, they can trail and wander a bit but harvest off what gets in the way. Tuck in a beautiful cayenne pepper. The plants are pretty and the peppers are wonderful! Beauty and usefulness! Annual, of course. Dill, cilantro (coriander), and anise are easily started from seed and are annual plants used for seed or leaf. Too many recipes to note for these! If allowing to set for seed, they can tall, especially dill. A nice rugosa rose tucked in the garden will offer up lovely tasting flower petals or hips in the fall. The rugosa is a hardy, large hip producing rose that needs little to no pruning. Some sweet violets tucked under larger plants offer some very tasty flowers as well as beauty. These come out early and will race the chives to be the first to bloom in an herb garden. Add to this some pot marigold or calendula. One of my favorites and once it starts to bloom it will do so until the killing frost in the fall. The plant can be used for culinary uses but mostly medicinal. It is a great pollinator attractor. Annual and dead simple to start from seed. I focused on some simple and easy edibles for you. FataMorgana