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Everydya Useful Plants

Vbkid

Getting There...
Everyday Useful Plants

To preface:
My girlfriend is involved with the solar house team at our university, every 2 years or so they complete a new solar powered house that is entered into a national competition. Now that they have something like 4 houses, they are putting them all into a 'solar village' near school. My girlfriend is also assisting in the landscaping of the village. One idea that she is considering is having every plant in the village have some secondary use besides looking nice (fruit trees, aloe plants, butterfly attracting plants etc., perennial herb bushes, etc) I was thinking that many people on this forum might have some good insights into other plants that might be of use. The criteria for such plants would be their ability to be used in standard soil, be perennials so that the village wouldn't need to be replanted each year, and ease of care since the university employees will likely be watering them.

Any ideas for such plants would be greatly appreciated and helpful!

thanks,
Kyle
 
There are a lot of useful plants that look good in the landscape.

Daylilies (H. fulva) - edible tubers and blooms
Echinacea - for tea
Jerusalem artichokes - edible tubers
Hyssop - tea
Mints - (good to contain these) for tea
Mullein - (V. thapsus; actually a biennial, but self sows) for tea
Nira - (garlic chives) cooking seasoning
Sage - (S. officinalis) cooking seasoning

Those are just some that I can think of right off hand.


David
 
Mints can be used as a pest repellent as well as for cooking and tea. Catnip in particular is good for warding off mice and other such critters, but most rodents find all mints objectionable.
Yarrow has medicinal uses but my favorite part about it is that you can plant it like a lawn and mow it as little as eight times a year. It's very trample resistant and comes back from the roots if you let it get tall and then chop it. Most varieties flower quite easily and have large, attractive clusters of blooms.
A number of Eucalyptus and Gum species are useful for tea and medicine. Most are also extremely fast-growing and return well from stumps, making them good for sustainable firewood production. One of my favorites is Corymbia citriodora, which produces citronella and a number of other citrus oils, a natural insect repellent. It produces large, fuzzy green leaves that absolutely reek of lemony goodness. You can use it for tea or just let the leaves pile up where they fall - whenever you walk over them or wet them down you'll get a waft of the citrus scent.
Gums and other fast-growing trees make good living fences. Birches and willows are remarkably amenable to training together - there is some amazing work going on constructing buildings out of interwoven, living trees. Brambles (blackberries, etc.) also make useful and attractive borders if you can contain them properly, with the added bonus of making good habitat for predators like snakes.
Some types of onions and garlic can be grown as perennials, although you might have to dig them up seasonally to split them. The greens from most alliums can be used in place of chives or green onions, and flowerstalks can be prepared in a manner similar to asparagus. Onions can be planted around roses to prevent disease, and I believe the whole family of plants is good for repelling some sort of pests, although I can't off the top of my head remember whether it's moles or some sort of bugs or what.
Rosemary, thyme and most other woody aromatic herbs are good for preventing pests of some sort or another, and will survive for many years if planted properly. You might want to look into companion planting, which focuses on the secondary uses of common plants - that's where I came across a lot of the above info.
A side idea that comes to mind for me is that it might mesh well with the useful plants theme to include some do-it-yourself and recycled-materials features with the garden. I'm very fond of hanging dead CDs up to scare birds and other critters away with reflected sunlight. :)
~Joe
 
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Google "edible landscaping."
 
yarrow, Achillea millefolium, butterflies love it and it will stop bleeding quicker than anything ive found......im on alot of NSAIDs at the moment so my blood is a lil thin, when i get cut in the yard i grab a couple leaves, crush them up, place them on the wound and i clot up very quick....
 
Nice tip rattler. I croaked my little pot recently in the heat but one day I'll probably put that to use. X)
~Joe
 
Yarrow is one that I really like too. I have some of it here for tea, antiseptic, and blood-stop, but it's only good as a tea if you have lots of mint to go with it. :-D


David
 
  • #10
chamomile makes a great sleep aid and relaxant when the flowers are made into a tea....not a perenial but if it reseeds itself up here it should do it most anywhere...

there are a couple roses that produce large hips that are good in tea and loaded with vitamin C......

daylily flowers are good to eat

elderberry fruit are packed with vitamin C and the flowers can be used much in the way of echinacea roots to prevent sickness.......

some sweet potatoes and yams make attractive vines aswell as having edible tubers.....

passion flower fruit make for a decent sleep aid as well as a delicious fruit....

you really should come up here and go through my mini library of edible and medicinal and ethnobotany books, this is just stuff im pulling off the top of my head :D
 
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