Collard Tree before and after gopher.
Last year, around the time I was beginning to write The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin, our thriving backyard vegetable garden lost a battle with our gopher nemesis.
I'm the chef in my household, and my husband is the gardener. Most of what he grows are edible plants that I can cook with, so we were both devastated that our backyard garden was left in shambles after gophers moved into our neighborhood.
With an opportunity to start with a clean slate in the garden, I undertook a lot of research into different types of gardens that might be well-suited to our area (after we installed gopher wire), including the books Creating Your Permaculture Heaven by Nydia Needham and Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shepard. I'd heard about permaculture and polyculture before, but didn't really know much until this past year.
As a bonus, since my Accidental Alchemist characters are deeply involved in working with plants, my deep dive into my own garden plans made its way into the novel. I'm not writing nonfiction, so my goal isn't to fit in a ton of details in my fiction. Instead, I hope the selected details sprinkled through my books help bring the characters to life.
And yes, I write books about subjects that interest me, so my book research is always such fun!
For example, I love herbalist Rosalee de la Forêt's book Alchemy of Herbs, and have used it so much over the years that the spine is falling off. While working on The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin, I discovered her latest book, Wild Remedies, co-written with Emily Han.
Those books inspired me to include even more herbs into our new garden plans. For now, I'm buying dried herbs, like nettles, for making loose leaf herbal teas at home. Nettle tea is my go-to tea for a late afternoon energy boost when it's too late in the day for coffee, but I'd like a little pick-me-up.
Wish me luck with our new garden. In the meantime, I'm living vicariously through Zoe Faust's garden.
Read more about a permaculture garden, a backyard garden, and herbal teas in The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin.