I have an oregano and golden marjoram bed under a cedar in the front yard.
If anyone needs oregano or marjoram…you should just come and take what you want. It’s bonkers how well this stuff does where I stuck it over ten years ago. I stuck two, 2″ potted plants in the ground and it now covers and area roughly 5′ x 6′. I shear it to the ground every year in February, and I give it a massive haircut usually in the middle of summer as well. Once I dried some, and then I walked outside and realized what an idiotic move that was given how much fresh stuff there is pretty much all year save for maybe two months.
But this one….this is a different animal. And I have struggled to keep it going in the past.
The first time I came across it, I bought a small plant. I didn’t know what it was, I just thought it was remarkably beautiful. When I realized it was a variety of oregano, though not a culinary one, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that something this ornate was the same as the culinary weed actively trying to take over my yard out front.
Amazing!
I kept it going for a year, and then I thought it died, but it came back the next spring. I had it for a few years, but an unusually c old winter for Vancouver killed it. And I’d not managed to find another.
I found some seeds online this spring, but never got around to planting them after I read how difficult they are to germinate and grow. I still have theme nd I will try….but then I was at a garden centre and stumbled across one.
And I had to take it home.
The flowers are those tiny little purple things, on the pale green bracts, with their veins standing out in the backlighting….
Flowers within flowers.
They make me think of an Easter hat.
I love this plant.
