Garden Color: Shaker Museum Enfield, NH

Today’s Garden Tour was in the Enfield Shaker Museum, a place where there is a flower and herb garden along with a community garden. The presentation and garden tour was by Mrs. Happy Griffiths, a Museum Herbalist, who explained the different aspects of the herbs and flowers. The day was a perfect one, no heat neither cold.

The garden is divided into five sections: medicinal, fragance, culinary, everlasting and dye plants.

The above picture with yellow, bright and fragrant flowers belong to the St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), it is located in the medicinal section of this garden. This perennial shrub grows 12-36 inches tall. The blooming period is from mid to late summer. The dark green leaves have oil glands which look like tiny perforations on their undersides. The name comes from its traditional flowering and harvesting on St. John's day, 24 June.

Cultivation
St. John's wort is usually propagated from runners in the autumn or by seed sown early in the spring. The plant does best when planted on an average soil and prefers dappled shade or full sun. The plants grow rapidly but are short lived, usually lasting only five or six years. Because of their dense, compact habit of growth they rarely need pruning, but if it is necessary to cut off deadwood, do so in early spring. New plants can be started from softwood cuttings of young growth in late spring or early summer.

For Depression Treatment

Harvesting
Cut flowers when fully open and pick leaves as required. Always harvest before the heat of the day

Medicinal Use
Use caution as this plant can cause photosensitivity in some people.
St John's wort is widely known as a herbal treatment for depression.

In Germany, the most popular prescription drug of any type, natural or synthetic, for the treatment of mild depression is a concentrated extract of the flowers and leaves of Saint-John's-wort, often simply called hypericum. There, just under 200,000 prescriptions per month are filled for a single brand (Jarsin), compared with about 30,000 per month for fluoxetine (Prozac). This figure does not include sales of other hypericum products, whether they are prescribed or self-selected. Approximately 80% of the sales are prescriptions, which allows their cost to be reimbursed by the German health-insurance system.
When preparing St. John's wort grown in your garden, use two to four grams of dried herb daily. The herb can be prepared as a tea. Both leaves and flowers are used.