For millennia, fragrance guided the design of gardens — from Persian courtyards to monastic cloisters. Today it’s often missing. In the Pacific Northwest, restoring scent means designing with intimacy, ecology, and time.
Russian comfrey isn’t a crop you grow and forget — it’s a permanent fixture in the food forest. The sterile Bocking 14 hybrid won’t spread by seed, but once rooted it becomes a long-term nutrient engine, pulling minerals from deep in the soil and cycling them into leaves you can cut again and again. We plant it around fruit trees not only for its mulch and pollinator blooms, but also as a living barrier that keeps out runner grasses.
