GARDENING Grow some herbs, and you're bound to curry some amazing flavor

Some consider mint a nuisance, but the writer thinks of it fondly.
By VIRGINIA A. SMITH
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
PHILADELPHIA -- Kathy Hawkins is crazy about summer basil. She grows it outside, inside, everywhere she can. She even keeps a pot of it on the kitchen counter, so all she has to do is pinch off the leaves, chop them up, and sprinkle them on her luscious homegrown tomatoes.
With every pinch, there's a bonus. That heavenly basil fragrance fills her South Coventry Township kitchen for hours.
"I absolutely love that smell," she says.
Hawkins, 46, is not an expert by any means, but she successfully grows lots of herbs every summer. And why not?
They're easy. They're fun. They smell great and look pretty. And all but the most exotic herbs are cheap -- $2 or so for a small pot -- and easy to find in garden centers or big-box stores.
Like many herb growers, Hawkins insists on super-fresh ingredients when she cooks, whether they're for cucumber salad from the garden or hot Mexican and Thai dishes.
But not everyone's a chef.
Lorraine Kiefer, who teaches classes on herbs, says some who grow their own want an herb garden "because it's charming, it's medieval, it's timeless."
"And because Martha Stewart has one," says Kiefer, co-owner of Triple Oaks Nursery, Florist and Herb Garden in Gloucester County, N.J.
Health reasons
There are health reasons, too, says Maureen Rogers, director of the Herb Growing and Marketing Network, a trade association in Silver Spring, Pa.
"People want to use less salt, so they use fresh herbs in their cooking, and whether the American Medical Association wants to believe it or not, people are growing medicinal herbs and drying them themselves," she says. Things like St. John's-wort and black cohosh.
Which raises the question: What, exactly, is an herb?
Turns out it's "anything used for fragrance, or for culinary or medicinal purposes," according to the Herb Society of America. Mint, used as tea to settle the stomach, is probably the herb most widely used for medicinal purposes.
And herbs can be more than leafy things like parsley and basil. They can be trees, shrubs and vines, as well as ferns, mosses, algae, lichens and fungi.
So much for the esoteric. How about the fun?
Caroline Amidon of East Nantmeal in Chester County is an avowed "herbie." She's past president of the Herb Society of America and co-author of a new book about scented geraniums, Pelargonium: 2006 Herb of the Year. Considered an herb, this is the colorful cousin of the common garden geranium.
Pungent aromas
Amidon, 74, has a greenhouse full of pelargoniums, known for their fruity, spicy and pungent aromas. She loves to float down the aisles pinching the leaves to release their marvelous essences: peppermint, rose, lemon, coconut, black pepper, nutmeg, apple, and many more.
"I grew a few about 15 years ago, and then it became an obsession," she says.
Amidon grows some herbs for cooking, and some to attract birds and butterflies, but it's the lovely pelargonium that transports her to another culinary level.
She makes scented syrup to brush over baked fruit and pound cakes, scented sugars and flours, oils and butters, chocolate rose-scented souffles, and lemon liqueurs.
"It's wonderful," she says.
Hawkins, a real estate agent, feels the same way about her sorrel soup, made with nine fresh herbs that she purees. And Jules Vassaluzzo, a retired family doctor, eagerly describes the herbs he grows on his three-quarter acre in Langhorne.
He has basil, mint, parsley, dill, chives, rosemary and other popular herbs. He has some uncommon ones, too: fennel; Agastache, or licorice mint; and cinnamon-scented perilla.
He makes potatoes with chives, lamb and pork with rosemary, sausage- and ground-beef-filled tomato sauce with basil, and his late wife's string bean salad with garlic and mint.
"Herbs are tough as nails," says Vassaluzzo, 67. "They're probably the easiest thing to grow in the whole garden."
Can be nuisance
Mint's easier than most, and true "herbies" consider it a nuisance. Although Vassaluzzo grows apple mint, spearmint, and other varieties, he makes sure to put them in pots, old washtubs, and kettles that he finds at flea markets. That way, they can't leap over tall buildings.
Mint thrives anywhere, he says, so if it must go into the garden, "best to put it where it's not so easy to grow things."
Oops. I put mint right in the middle of my busy, year-old herb garden. It hasn't gone wild yet but -- apologies to all who disagree -- I'm sort of hoping it does.
Lots of things we gardeners do are more about impulse and emotion than reason. So it is with me and mint.
I spent many happy hours as a child exploring the woods and meadows near my home, an idea that would make parents today apoplectic. But those were sweeter days, and my adventures were exciting and absorbing.