When Christine War walks from the back door of her home near the Rio Grande, she often sees dandelions, yerba mansa, purslane and lamb's quarter. To most people, these are weeds to be pulled. But for Christine, who’s surrounded daily by physicists committed to exploring the physical properties of the universe, they're more.
"I've completely stopped weeding the dandelions in my yard because there are so many uses for them," says Christine, who has worked in the Physics division at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 19 years. "Now I just let them grow wild."
Christine has learned that many plants — even those considered weeds — have beneficial properties waiting to be discovered.
She has a sizable rose garden, an array of citrus trees that she moves inside during the winter and an ever-growing herb garden used for meals, hair ointments and medicinal remedies. She's recently taken an interest in learning to forage native plants. And her vegetable garden is a veritable at-home farmer’s market, with everything needed to make a variety of salsas.
"I've turned into my dad,'" Christine says with a laugh, "because I now put chile on everything."
Falling in love with New Mexico
Christine lived in Colorado for 24 years, mostly in Denver, before meeting the man who would become her husband while visiting family in New Mexico.
"I've always been a city girl," she says, "and I never imagined that I would move out to the country and develop a passion for gardening."
But not long after she married, Christine and her husband bought property north of Española, along the Rio Grande bosque. The location was a far cry from the city she'd grown up in, and it took her a while to adjust to rural life.
Christine found a job in the Laboratory's Physics division where the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) is located. She still works there today, now in the division office as an operations support specialist overseeing the chemical management program, legacy waste and environmental cleanup.
Christine also plays a crucial role in ensuring Physics division renovation projects and lab upgrades are completed within scope and budget, with a priority on safety and operational excellence.
"I love the staff in the division that I work in, including group management," Christine says. "I've worked in the division my entire career because of these partnerships."
It didn't take long for Christine to see something magical in her new surroundings.
"When I moved to New Mexico, in time, I fell in love with all its beauty," Christine says. "I researched various gardening ideas and began with lavender, then experimented with a variety of wildflowers. Now my favorite season is spring. When I wake up to the sound of all the birds singing, I feel like Snow White. And the yard is lush with beautiful, towering cottonwood trees."
Trial and error
Christine's introduction to gardening didn't come without a few failed experiments, though.
In wanting to spruce up her land, she looked around her property and saw what she initially thought was wild, unmanaged chaos. A flower garden would help, she thought. So she visited a nearby hardware store.
At the beginning, the flowers she bought survived the summer but not the winter, which is when she learned about U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Hardiness Zones, the map that helps determine the cold tolerance of plants.
"I spent a lot of money on plants and flowers that died those first years," she says with a laugh. "But you do discover more over time. I soon had a garden full of roses with red, pink and yellow flowers."
A large herb garden soon followed. Then raised beds with tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, jalapeños, carrots and corn.
Gardening soon transformed from an enjoyable pastime to a major part of her life. In her herb garden alone, she planted sage, basil, thyme, lemon thyme, peppermint, spearmint, chocolate mint, oregano, parsley, cilantro, chives, tarragon, dill, yerba mansa, yerba de la negrita, echinacea and oshá. Maybe she'd gone a little overboard, she thought. But instead of scaling back, she decided to find a use for each herb.
"I had put so much time into raising all of these amazing herbs," she says, "so I wanted to preserve them."
Using every part of the plant
Soon lavender flowers began to make an appearance in Christine's culinary creations — some of the experiments more successful than others.
"Some of the pairings weren't hits with the family," she says. "But I found you can pair lavender with a lot of veggie dishes — I love asparagus — and you may be surprised at the combination, but you won't be disappointed."
By now, Christine's garden far exceeded her need to flavor meals. So she started making herb sachets — small, perfumed bags — with lavender, rosemary, mint and sage. Eventually, this path led to essential oils.
"With the essential oils, I found I could use the herbs for just about everything," Christine says. "I began making my own hair rinses, cleaning products, tinctures, room and linen sprays, and even pet-safe blends. I wanted to learn how to use every part of the plant in as many ways as possible."
Christine extended the practice to nearly everything in her garden. With her abundance of aloe vera, she taught herself how to make aloe vera gel. She boiled yerba mansa whenever anyone in the family got a cold. She always carries oshá root in her pocket as an antiseptic for cuts. She started seeing dandelions in her yard as something beautiful to be used rather than weeds because every part is edible — the flowers, roots, stems and leaves.
Suddenly a new world was revealed, one in which Christine's yard was not an ornament but an ecosystem that fed the hummingbirds, bees, frogs, snakes, rabbits and her family.
"You know, there are herbal healers in New Mexico that have extensive understanding of faith, herbs, home remedies and people's health," Christine says. "In a similar way, I want to be able to look at plants, and know what hidden use they have and if or how they can be used.
"For me, gardening has become my therapy. It's my getaway and serenity. It removes the stresses and cleanses the soul, because when you work the soil you can enjoy the fruits of your labor. In the summertime, I'm planting and harvesting, then I dry my herbs in the fall, prepare my tinctures in the winter, and by spring it's starting all over again."
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