I’ve inherited a garden full of borage and I don’t know what to do with it. Any ideas?
Borage is one of those under-appreciated plants that doesn’t often make it into gardens and that’s a shame. Its attractive foliage and blue star-shaped flowers give it a raw beauty that’s perfectly suited to herb gardens or informal flower borders. The leaves, stems and flowers are all edible and have an innocuous flavor that can be described as a cross between cucumber and celery. This gives it great culinary range.
The young leaves can be steamed and eaten like spinach, tossed fresh into salads, used as garnish for lemonade, or mixed with other herbs into yogurt or sour cream and used as a sauce for potatoes or other vegetables. It's an excellent flavoring for fish, soup or eggs. Its stems can be used like celery and its flowers make a colorful addition to salads when fresh and to potpourri when dried. You can even boil the leaves and stems to make tea.
An annual, borage is simple to grow from seed and readily reseeds itself, so plant it once and you’ll have a friend for life. If you love bees, you’ll love borage, which tends to be the most popular plant in the garden when it’s in flower. If you don’t love bees, you’ll probably still love borage, you’ll just find yourself doing it from the other end of the garden.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
