Before The Flowers
- Isis
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
I brush a leaf and the whole morning shifts.
That's what Prostanthera incisa does. You don't need to wait for the flowers, the plant communicates long before they arrive. A single pass of a finger across those small, deeply cut leaves and the air fills with something sharp and clean and green, a mintiness that isn't soft or sweet but immediate. Present. The Cut-leaf Mint Bush doesn't hold back.
This is the thing about Protanthera incisa, that I could not have predicted before I grew it, The scent is immediate and total, a quiet connector to our sensory awareness, it meets you in the moment you make contact, a clean, sharp mintiness that belongs to the Australian bush.
I've been watching this one through the cooler months in the nursery. It's been patient in its pot, putting down roots quietly, building what it needs before it commits to bloom. There's something in that I've been sitting with. The flowers aren't, not yet, but everything necessary for them is already happening underneath and inside and through.
Prostanthera incisa belongs to the Lamiaceae family, the same family as mint, basil, rosemary, lavender. These are relational plants. Their aromatics aren't incidental they're a language. What the plant releases when touched is a form of communication: with the insects that find it, with the soil biology around its roots, with the air it moves through. When I brush the leaves, I'm not interrupting that conversation. I'm being included in it.
In spring it will flower. Small blooms, purple-lilac, opening along the stems in the way that Australian native shrubs do not in a single showy moment but gradually, generously, over weeks. The bees will find it without being told. They already know this plant. They've known it longer than we have.
It grows well in well-drained soil, in part shade to full sun. In eastern Australia it asks for very little and gives back a great deal: fragrance, flowers, pollinator habitat, the particular quality of stillness that aromatic plants seem to carry around them. I've noticed that the area around a Prostanthera always feels slightly quieter than the space beside it. I don't have a scientific explanation for that. I don't think I need one.
Upon contemplation within the interconnected from garden to table, if the scent is a language, then bringing it into the kitchen is a way of extending the conversation. I keep coming back to that idea that what a plants says thorugh fragrance doesn't have to remain in the garden. A few fresh leaves, lightly bruised, and that same clean mintiness moves into the oil, into food, into something we can share at the table.
It feels like a natural continuation of the relationship rather than a departure from it.
Native Mint Bush Infused Olive Oil
Ingredients: 250ml extra virgin olive oil, 8–12 fresh leaves (or 1 tbsp dried), sterilised bottle.
Method: Bruise leaves, place in bottle, cover with oil, seal and store 7–14 days in a cool dark place.
Strain and refrigerate. Use within 2–3 weeks.
Serving ideas: roasted vegetables, pumpkin, sourdough, native herb vinaigrettes, grilled fish, focaccia.
Wild by Talulah Tip: A little goes a long way.
This spring I'm offering it from the nursery. But before you decide whether it belongs in your garden, I'd suggest meeting it first the way I always do.
Brush a leaf. Then decide.
Happy Creating with Nature🍃🌳
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