February 19th, 2011 
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The EC Organic Herb and Vegetable Garden Outline
This garden project will fulfill multiple purposes for the Eckerd community. First, to educate the community and provide, as a learning tool, knowledge of medicinal plants that are commonly taken today without strict regulatory standards. And second, to educate the community about self subsistence and sustainable agriculture. The garden will have a strong ethnobotanical focus, pertaining to the medicinal benefits of various plants, exotic and native. All exotic plants will be contained in pots. The medicinal plants are all harmless; they are not intended for ingestion by the community, except of course common plants such as chamomile or sage. The plants are intended to raise awareness about supplements that people are ingesting today in soft drinks, food, and “tea.” Medicinal plants are widely sold and commonly ingested without proper knowledge or instruction, due to their ambiguous regulatory status. This ambiguous status refers to good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and other laws defined by the F.D.A that define supplements as food and therefore do not get into details about dosage and biochemical effects. The popularity of medicinal plants is wide, with over the counter herbal product sales exceeding 2.6 billion in 1999 (HerbalGram.org). There are millions of people ingesting these plants without proper research done regarding them.
The other portion of the project will be dedicated to researching organic and sustainable forms of agriculture and applying these techniques to the garden. This project will have a strong focus on visiting local sites, businesses and organizations in the community. This will include an internship/work exchange at a sustainable community or “Eco Village,” which is also a division of the Institute for Appropriate Transferable Technology.
The project will also include 60 hours of volunteer work at the Bay Pines Veterans’ hospital, most of which will be spent working on the garden in the therapeutic recreation department. There will also be contact with local businesses, such as Acupuncture and Herbal Therapies, which held a demonstration regarding these plants at the dorm complex where the garden is located .
For a year, this garden has served as a learning tool to educate those in the community on precautionary measures to be taken with medicinal plants. It will also serve to educate the community on the benefits of convenient, safe, inexpensive, and effective home remedies. It is important to recognize both the benefits and the drawbacks of herbal and other natural phytochemiccals used as
Medications. Drawbacks stem from the fact that over the counter products often do not contain the stated dosage or potency due to inadequate scientific research. Herbs are considered “food,” and therefore must only adhere to good manufacturing practices (GMP’s). This is not the case in many countries outside America, in particular Germany which has a branch of government called Commission E which regulates many herbs under standards held for most pharmaceuticals.
The supplement industry has been booming recently, this includes largely herbal or plant-based products. Herbs are gaining in popularity for various reasons. They are often safer than pharmaceutical drugs (though some still have side effects). Plants are absorbed more slowly and thus more gently into the system than synthesized chemicals. Also, there are an incredible number of deaths attributed to the ingestion of prescription drugs (Weil). An idea commonly held among complementary medical practitioners and an increasing number of doctors, is that plants in their natural state include synergistic effects of many different compounds that one does not get from an isolated chemical believed to be the active ingredient An example of this is the compound Artemisinin, isolated from Artemisia annua and used to treat drug resistant malaria. It produces a number of unpleasant side effects during treatment. However, when the whole plant is taken the side effects do not exist and treatment is just as effective. The plant creates compounds of which the only known purpose is to alleviate the side effects the isolated constituent produces (Harrod Buhner). This is possibly due to plants evolution in which humans have selectively helped propagate those species which are particularly beneficial.
Recently pharmaceutical companies have been under pressure from the FDA and suffering economically due to recalls of products that were causing obvious and grave health problems. The following quote is from The New York Times Business Day section front page: “Pfizer’s surprise announcement Friday, in which it disclosed serious health risks in high doses of its arthritis drug Celebrex, roiled the pharmaceutical sector. Pfizer, a Dow Jones industrial, once again took losses” (New York Times December 21, 2004). Another quote from the paper two days later: “Merck, another large pharmaceutical company (referring to its relation to Pfizer) just recently recalled its own painkiller
Vioxx from the market on Sept. 30” (New York Times December 18, 2004.) Information like this leads to loss of faith in the current medical establishment. Upon completion of this paper yet another article was read by the author linking the pain killer Aleve to heart attacks. This sort of publicity is also partly responsible for the resurgence of interest in complementary medicine and anything sold as “natural.” Thus, the herbal supplement industry is growing and attracting much attention from pharmaceutical companies, the government and the public.
Even further reasons people have been choosing plant based medication stem from the fact that medicinal plants alive and for sale are less expensive and more accessible then most other drugs. This may not seem important at first, but there are a surprisingly large number of people that leave symptoms ignored and untreated due to too much red tape or high prices. Regarding this, it bears mentioning that health care in America is below par compared to many other economically similar countries. I personally think plant based and other forms of complementary medicine should be used to do just that, complement more mainstream forms of medicine. Another, more humanitarian, importance of this study is that approximately 65 percent of the world relies on medicinal plants, not pharmaceuticals, for their health (FDA.gov). These are people in the third world or developing countries who cannot afford prescription drugs. Better study of these plants will help the local healers in these countries understand and use what they already have available. These plants have been proven to be effective as can be seen in their use in mainstream medicine. Over 25% of common medications come from plants (www.drwel.com). Many pharmaceutical drugs are concentrated or isolated derivatives of a naturally occurring plant chemical or are an analogue to those found in nature.
The benefits of medicinal plants are many. They have been proven, through ages of folk use, to be safe and effective through trial and error. This means of deducing which plants are safe and medicinal has helped serve us today in identifying potential useful species for research. There is increasing amount of scientific research into the benefits and precautions that should be taken with these plants, though not nearly enough is being done. Most chemical research is funded by pharmaceutical companies who have little to gain monetarily from plants which are unregulated and not able to be patented. Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, commented on this issue, “Drug companies do conduct research into plants but acknowledge it’s not a priority within the industry, research on other products holds more promise of being effective” (www.cnn.com).
The second aspect of this garden, still concentrating on personal health, will be the organic and subsistence garden section. Today what we eat is usually processed (often with an otherworldly appearance) and rarely made with healthy or natural ingredients. We have become completely detached, removed and disinterested from the food we put in our bodies. This is where the creation of home gardens and a movement called Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) can be a wonderful solution to this problem. Such local farms as “Sweet Water Organic” (a popular quest for meaning volunteer organization) practice CSA for its numerous community building, health and ecological benefits. Community supported agriculture is a recent movement in which small local farms charge individual membership to community members for a portion of the weekly (or bi-weekly) share of the produce. The food is less expensive than going through a middleman wholesaler, is fresher, and usually (depending on the farm) is organic. Often there are opportunities to work to pay part off the cost of membership. Besides being a hands-on learning tool for the community, it provides recreation, education, and possibly most importantly, environmentally sustainable, nutritious, pesticide free, fresh produce to members. CSA and home gardens more directly integrate people with their food source. Our society today is in need of this in these dark days of nutrition, with the dominance of processed and fast foods in America’s markets and stomachs.
Home gardens such as this, are another way of producing fresh organic food. About fifty- three percent of households in the United States now garden. They garden only 600 square feet on average. Home gardens make around two dollars per square foot, double that for the premium price of what organic food costs retail. These gardens produce about eighteen percent of the food in the United States (Jeeves). Home gardens and small-scale farming are also more productive
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