Gardeners at URI suggest sweet-smelling plants to explore
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| WELCOME: URI green spaces are open to the public, including the Youngken Medicinal Garden; shown, students AJ Chatterton, Ash Lilly and Kate Guinto with coordinator Elizabeth Leibovitz. (URI Photo / K. Curry) |
While the public loved
Morticia, the University of Rhode Island’s recently-bloomed
corpse flower, its 1,200-acre Kingston Campus offers the public a wide
variety of sweet-smelling specimens to experience and enjoy.
Plant sciences major Daniel Meservey, who works in URI’s Horridge Conservatory, says the conservatory has a number of fragrant specimens in its collection.
In the Conservatory, Meservey recommends olfactory-minded visitors locate the Lady of the Night and Kahili ginger, which will bloom soon.
Meservey also recommends
visitors look for the dendrobium and coconut orchids, passion flower, camellia,
and Arabian jasmine for their compelling smells.
His colleague Allegra Halverson, with URI Farms, says the Department of Plant Sciences and Entomology enjoyed making a cool plant like the corpse flower accessible to the public and hopes it piques interest in more of the botanical collections at URI.
“We hope this is a great gateway for people who have never visited the plant collections on campus to come back and enjoy what we have to offer,” she said. Halverson recommends visitors return to URI to smell the orange jessamine in the Horridge Conservatory come winter and notes a few other fragrant faves on campus as well:
The Katsura tree smells like cotton candy in the fall when the leaves drop. These trees can be found in the Botanical Gardens, at the Tootell Aquatic Center’s entrance, at Independence Square and elsewhere.
The Japanese tree lilac features white flowers in summer and blooms in June.
Fragrant snowball viburnum can be found at the entrance to the rose garden in May and elsewhere on the Kingston Campus. This is an example of a white flower that has a strong smell—an adaptation for attracting night foraging pollinators like moths and bats. The white flowers are also more visible at night.
Spicebush lives up to its name. Lindera benzoin smells like lemon fresh if you scratch the twigs and features small yellow flowers in spring; there are many along the Upper College Road edge of the Botanical Gardens. This native species is also great for birds with red fruits in the fall.
Garden therapy
URI’s College of Pharmacy includes the Youngken
Medicinal Garden, also open to the public and a short walk from the
conservatory. With 300 medicinal plants, the courtyard and garden are one of
New England’s largest established medicinal gardens.
“Pharmacy students need to know about the plants that
patients are consuming and can interact with,” Garden Coordinator Elizabeth
Leibovitz said.
Unlike the corpse-flower tour—understandably contained for
the crowds and the plant’s integrity—Leibovitz’s garden tours are hands-on
experiences. She encourages tour-takers to touch, smell, and sniff for a true
sensory garden experience.
She encourages people to learn more about the plants under
her care, so they start to see plants as a lynchpin of health. “Plants
represent the health people can build on their own, and the ways that health
benefits when people incorporate healthy plants and vegetables into their
diets,” she said. “For me, every garden is medicine.”
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| SCENT STANDOUT: This camellia flower in the conservatory smells like a sweet rich rose. (URI Photo / Daniel Meservey) |
Many traditional remedies are derived from a plant-based approach, from chicken soup and chamomile tea to menthol-derived cough drops in cold season.
Students working in the garden this summer, who were drawn
there by its therapeutic benefits, help lead tours and talk with visitors. AJ
Chatterton is a statistics and computer science graduate student who came on
board to have some non-screen time; Ash Lilly is a biomedical sciences /
pharmacy senior splitting time between lab and landscape. Kate Guinto works in
the garden as a sophomore Pharm.D. student.
The medicinal garden includes eucalyptus and tea tree
plants, both notable for health applications. Other plants, such as lemon balm
and lemongrass, create similar scent profiles, based on how their compounds
volatilize in air. Leibovitz points out thyme and sage and describes their role
in plague posies.
Leibovitz was glad to see so many plant enthusiasts on
campus this summer, bringing curiosity about the wild variety of plant life,
and hopes many return to learn more about URI’s medicinal garden.
“We are another plant source and site for information and
inspiration,” Leibovitz said. “URI’s medicinal garden is a community hub and we
invite Morticia fans to come back and explore further.”
To request a tour of the Youngken Medicinal Garden,
email elizabeth_leibo@uri.edu.
Tours are free year-round, but must be scheduled in advance. The garden is open
to the public dusk-dawn and also offers curriculum for school groups. Follow
at @urimedicinalgarden.
The Horridge Conservatory is
open to the public, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 6 Greenhouse
Road, Kingston. Follow at @uri.plantsciences.
Visitor parking is available.
For advice on which plants to plant in your garden, URI Master Gardeners also
offer a free Gardening
and Environmental Hotline: contact 401-874-4836 or gardener@uri.edu.
