Borage To Give You Courage

If you stroll through our pollinator beds in the Pick Your Own area of the farm you’ll notice a large fuzzy looking plant with beautiful blue star-shaped flowers. It’s called borage and it’s been used as a medicinal plant since the days of Ancient Greece. It’s traveled through lands and cultures, even making a stop in Elizabethan England as the “herb of gladness” and was prescribed for melancholy as well as to boost courage before jousting. In traditional medicine, borage is seen as having sweet, cooling, and astringent properties - perfect to dispel the heat of a hot summer’s day. Its leaves have a cucumbery flavor when juiced or dried and used for tea and its flowers are delightfully edible. Even from just a quick observation of our pollinator beds, you can see that borage is a bee’s favorite hotspot. Its bright blue flowers attract bees from all over, giving it the nickname of “bee bread.”

Borage has been used for many purposes thro