Dr. Duke’s Farmacy Garden
Text and Photos by Neil Soderstrom

Now 80, botanist James A. Duke, PhD, has long been “one of the most trusted authorities on herbal remedies,” according to author Andrew Weil, MD. Jim Duke’s many books include The Green Pharmacy, which has sold more than a million copies since 1997, also his monumental Handbook of Medicinal Herbs and more recently The Green Pharmacy Guide to Healing Foods.

Jim retired in 1995 from the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), having specialized in ethnobotany—the study of plant uses by indigenous peoples. For decades, Jim explored the world’s jungles and other wild places in search of medicinal plants that farmers might be willing to grow instead of illicit drug crops. His search for medicinals led to collaboration with the National Cancer Institute. During this time, Jim created the USDA’s world famous “Plants Database.” He is frequently consulted by federal agencies, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Jim’s terraced Green “Farmacy” garden in Fulton, Maryland, contains 200 different species, planted in 80 small garden plots, each plot devoted to a common ailment such as arthritis, headache, diabetes, or high blood pressure. He prefers to conduct garden tours barefoot, pausing to lean on his walking staff, while explaining the merits of each plant. His voice is a gentle tenor, infused with southern inflections of his boyhood Alabama. At the end of each tour, Jim settles into a lawn chair with his old guitar and serenades:

Feel them coming on: bronchitis, colds and flus?
I’ll take echinacea, it’s the herb I always choose.
I also take the garlic, almost every day.
The grandkids kinda shy away,
And it keeps their germs at bay.

Last October, Jim and wife Peggy Duke hosted my overnight visit, which almost coincided with a visit from USDA’s media crew. With debt to those folks, I’ve blended their interviews with my own.

What’s your main message?
“We’ll never know whether my herb is better than your pharmaceutical until they have been compared in unbiased clinical trials against placebo. In many cases, when researchers have done that—for example when saffron was compared with imipramine, a pharmacological antidepressant—the herb won. I dare say that if we conducted head-to-head trials with 3,000 pharmaceuticals and 3,000 herbals, the herbs would win more frequently, would be cheaper, and would have fewer side effects. We’ve been duped.

Celebrex may have killed some men,
But not me, what me worry?
With my arthritis kickin’ in,
I just up my dose of curry.

What about arthritis?
“The pharmaceutical industry has been promoting COX-2 Inhibitor, a special kind of anti-inflammatory compound, as in Celebrex and Vioxx. After about 10 years, Vioxx was pulled off the market because it was increasing heart attacks and strokes. In my Farmacy garden, we have what I call a COX-2 pain-inhibiting plot. There I grow the recipe ingredients for my curried celery soup. The plot contains celery, which has a natural anti-inflammatory compound called apigenin. The plot also has turmeric, which contains the natural COX-2 inhibitor curcumin, a component of curry. There’s also green tea, a rich source of anti-inflammatory catechins. And there’s COX-2 inhibitor hot pepper with its capsaicin, which also interferes with pain perception and triggers the body to release natural opiates called endorphins. Hot pepper also contains salicylates—natural aspirin. So when I cook up my curried celery, I’ve got about 10 different herbal COX-2 inhibitors that human genes have known for centuries. Instead, 10 years down the road, the pharmaceutical companies need to pull their drugs off the market because the 1.7 billion dollar studies they conducted just did not prove safe and efficacious.”

Is Big Pharma your real friend at heart?
Take one a day till death do us part.

Can’t herbs compete in the marketplace?
“Money talks, and as with pharmaceuticals, it would cost $1.7 billion to prove an herb safe and efficacious. No herb company has that kind of money, or Big Pharma’s advertising budgets.”

Male erectile dysfunction (E.D.):
“They always seem to advertise during dinner time TV when the grandchildren are here—those ads suggesting that you call your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours—a dangerous potential side effect that probably sounds appealing to some men. Grandpa, what’s an erection?”

Garden in the backyard?
“I would advise growing what my parents grew: lettuces, tomatoes, beans, garlic, onions, and mints—simple foods with good medicinal content. Once you get a mint started, you’ll have trouble getting rid of it, of course, but it can easily add a lot of pleasure and vitamins to your life.”

How about general food choices?
“You’re always better off the closer you are to the farm and the farther you are from the food processing plant. However, I can appreciate the expedience of modern life persuading many of us to pop a multivitamin pill, rather than raising many of the 200 plant species in my garden.

“I always recommend the whole food rather than a pharmaceutically isolated plant chemical because chemicals in whole foods evolved together and they work synergistically—and are less likely to intoxicate.

“When I go out to a restaurant, I order soup and salad more often than anything—first, because I’m a cheapskate and, second, because I’m getting a whole lot of variety. And food variety is one of the most important things for your health. The more different vegetables I have in that soup or salad, the more likely I am to satisfy some unknown deficiency.”

Top disease fighters?
“What I call ‘Duke’s Dozen’ in my book The Green Pharmacy Garden Guide to Healing Foods includes beans, garlic and other bulbs in the Allium genus, caffeinators, celery, cinnamon, citrus fruits, ginger, mints, peppers, pomegranates, turmeric (the main ingredient in curry), and walnuts—all with special virtues of their own.

Online?
Jim’s website (greenpharmacy.com) offers hours of compelling commentary.

Warning: Dr. Duke cautions against self-diagnosis, which can often be a misdiagnosis. He also cautions that his remedies are not prescriptive. Medicinal plants should only be taken in consultation with a physician familiar with their potential effects and interactions.

Neil Soderstrom is the author of Deer-Resistant Landscaping, reviewed in our Summer 2009 issue by Sheila Buff.