Herbalist’s Husband Told Her to Try Growing a Garden So She Did--on the Front Lawn

Ah, the splendor of herbs is just the right medicine for today’s fast-food cooking crowd, says herbalist Joyce Smith of Fullerton, whose herb garden no doubt is the envy of her neighbors. It takes the place of her front lawn.

“I spend about the same time on it as I would taking care of grass,” she said while tending a garlic chives plant, one of the tasty specimens she grows in her tiered garden that includes roses for fragrance. “Instead of grass, I get something productive out of the land.”

Some of the basic herbs she grows are sweet marjoram, rosemary, several strains of thyme, cilantro and basil. “It’s so easy to grow,” said Smith, who writes a weekly garden column and travels the country looking for new strains of herbs in gardens like hers. “More people should grow herbs. They make food taste better and have beautiful foliage.”

It’s her feeling that today’s on-the-fast-track family that takes little time for cooking can make most things taste better by using fresh herbs, especially ones they grow.

“You can perk up the canned taste of most food by adding some sort of herb,” said Smith, a veteran volunteer at the Fullerton Arboretum, where she learned about herbs through her work and from the arboretum’s vast library.

“You can also use herbs to take the place of salt,” she said, “and that’s healthier and makes food tastier.”

In fact, she said, more restaurants are shipping in herbs to flavor their foods, some even planting their own gardens to make sure they are getting fresh herbs. “Even people who want simple food want the flavor that comes from herbs,” she contends.

And she puts that knowledge into practice, said arboretum spokeswoman Dorothy Callison.”Each year Joyce brings in various sauces she makes using the herbs she grows and we all wait for that,” Callison said.

Smith’s healthy herb plants are the result of 15 years of reading and working at the arboretum, and when she goes home “the herb garden is my first priority,” she said. It’s a tad ahead of the extensive number of vegetables and citrus she grows in the back yard.

“When our (three) children left home,” said Smith, smiling as she scanned her front-yard handiwork, “my husband (O.L. Smith) said ‘why don’t you try growing a garden?’ ”

Martin Rossman of Huntington Beach sent in business cards for two officers of a transfer and storage firm. One was for Carol Thomas Sederberg, the president-owner, and the other was for Cornelius Vanderbilt, director of security.

Vanderbilt is a dog.

Don’t question Oakley Hall, 66, of Irvine about his credentials for teaching fiction writing at UC Irvine. Besides being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for one of his books, he just had his 19th novel published.

The grandchildren will be arriving from points throughout the country to sing happy birthday and help blow out the 100 candles for their grandmother Alma Summerville of Garden Grove, who was born Aug. 16, 1886, on a farm in Indiana.

“We’re going to have a family reunion and a big chicken dinner with homemade noodles (her favorite),” said grandson John MacDonald, 31, of Garden Grove. Summerville has three children and 16 grandchildren.

“Grandma is doing quite well,” he said, and points to some good reasons for her longevity. “She never smoked, drank or cursed. Besides that she’s a true-blue American flag-waver.”

Mildred Sims of La Habra is a sporadic winner. Sims recollects she won a $5 bill at a carnival in 1933, but in the 53 years since then she hadn’t won anything. This time, however, she took the grand prize at the La Habra Lions Club Corn Festival.

Grandma Sims now tools about town in her prize, a 1986 Camaro.

Acknowledgments--Lorraine Soo Storck of Fullerton, a free-lance writer and poet, was named 1986 Golden Poet Award winner by Seattle-based World of Poetry. She is currently compiling a book on the love thoughts of famous people.