The Ayurvedic Garden: Cultivating Healing Herbs at Home
Since your childhood days, you might have memories of your parents plucking medicinal plants for small health issues. It was and almost still is a common practice to grow some medicinal plants around our houses. This practice is dying down among us with all the modern lifestyles that people are adopting. To bring back the holistic lifestyle, the School of Ayurveda College in Kerala offers courses and special seminars on the benefits of growing herbs that are useful for several medical emergencies.
The cultivation of healing herbs helps us increase clean air while providing resources for a healthy lifestyle with good food and unpolluted water. To acquire all these excellent aftereffects, you have to implement a nature-entailed lifestyle around your home. Keralites have access to numerous Ayurvedic healing plant varieties since it is the birthplace of Ayurveda. There is a rightful way of promoting wellness in Ayurveda through the use of natural herbs to treat various diseases.
Know the Healing Herbs around your home
There is a chance that many of us might be unaware of different healing herbs that are growing around our home. Knowing them and the right way of using them for health benefits is imperative to avoid unwanted exposure to foreign substances in our bodies by using modern medicine.
Some of the most common medicinal plants that you can grow around your home include Tulsi, Lemon, Koorkkila, Adalodakam, Brahmi (Water Hyssop), Red-flame Ivy, Neelamari (Indian indigo), Indian Aloe, Keezhanelli, and more. There is a right way to cultivate healing plants around your home premises and we will be discussing it throughout this blog.
What is an Ayurvedic Healing Garden?
As the name itself resonates, the Ayurvedic garden is the collective farming and cultivation of plants with medicinal properties according to Ayurveda. Cultivating healing herbs recommended by Ayurveda offers you the option to enjoy their beauty and fragrance while having easy access to natural remedies for common illnesses.
Creation and cultivation of Ayurvedic Healing Herbs
Many of us lean back from creating a healthy garden of healing plants around us thinking that it needs more care than common plants or they will take most of the time in a day for other matters. In reality, you can cultivate the best Ayurvedic plants without spending a lot of money or time if you can follow the steps that we are about to discuss.
Choosing a location
Choosing the right location is an imperative step when you are creating a garden of medicinal or non-medicinal plants alike. A place where all your plants get enough sunlight, water, and air circulation is one of the basic amenities your plants need to grow salubriously. While choosing a location as aforementioned, it is also important to choose a place where the plants will not get destroyed by too much wind, polluted air, or shady atmosphere.
Preparation of Soil
Getting the soil ready in the location you choose significantly involves the health of the plants you choose to grow. Enriching the soil naturally using the right amount of nutrients is possible through adding organic matter such as compost, manure, or vermicompost. Adding these will improve the drainage and aeration properties of the soil.
Selection of plants
All plants are not made for every atmosphere, climate, or region. You have to choose healing herbs that are suitable for your climate, soil, and space you have to grow them. Selection of plants should be done only after enough research and information about the space you have and the cultivation requirements of the plants you have access to. Consulting an expert in the field like a nursery practitioner or a specialist who offers Ayurveda treatment in Kerala can help you a lot in this.
Know the planting requirements
Every plant has its own attributes and requires comfort to grow better. Some herbs have to be grown in a pot while some others need more space to grow. This is the same when it comes to water and care that we should provide them. You can create sections of plants in your garden by classifying them in groups regarding the health benefits they offer or the kind of use each plant has.
Regular care for plants
Taking care of the plants you choose to grow is something you should not overlook. Watering and weeding them regularly as per the requirements is important to get the maximum harvesting potential from your medicinal plants. You can use natural pest control methods to keep weeds away from your medicinal garden. Some of the natural pest control methods include neem oil, garlic spray, marigold flowers, and more.
Benefits of having an Ayurvedic Garden
Finding the benefits of having medicinal plants around your home is nothing new to most of us. They all will become handy whenever you are suffering from various health problems. Your health and well-being can take great advantage as following from an Ayurvedic Garden.
- Ayurvedic medicinal plants can be used for the preparation of teas, oils, powders, or pastes for various uses. They could be great for the healing of illnesses such as cough, cold, fever, indigestion, skin problems, stress, anxiety, and more.
- Everyone likes to have better flavor and aroma for their food and drinks and that is what some of these herbs can offer. You can use them to enhance the taste, flavor, and aroma like adding mint leaves to your lemonade or fennel seeds to your tea.
- A relaxing and soothing environment is another benefit you experience through growing plants around your home. A relaxing and pleasant environment is the aftereffect of the beauty and fragrance of the plants you choose for your garden.
- Buying herbs from the market does not offer purity and it might cost you more money. By growing herbs in your own premises, you will be able to save money while experiencing herbs in their pure form. Either you can make good money, or donate them to your loved ones or the nearest Ayurvedic clinic.
Growing your own healing herbs is one way to enjoy greater benefits of health and happiness from nature. It can also be a rewarding hobby that connects you with the better side of nature. There are several online Ayurveda courses from which you can learn more about medicinal plants and how to grow them.