Herbs are wonderful in both the garden and the kitchen. Many are easy to grow and well worth the effort. If you've been thinking about starting an herb garden I encourage you to just go ahead and do it! They taste good! They smell good! Just like a homegrown anything tastes and smells better than what you can buy at the store! So try it! You'll like it! If a full fledged formal herb garden is more than you'd really like to take on right now, that's okay. You could probably manage to try out a few no matter how or where you garden.
You can tuck some into the corner of the vegetable garden, intersperse some in the flower garden, or jam some into a container or two to enjoy by your entryway or along the back deck. Some herbs will even tolerate windowsill culture for at least a few months and some, like bay trees, even longer.
Here's how I do it at my house. I grow thyme here and there throughout the flower and shrub gardens, and use chives as an edger along the long flower border. The parsley, basil, dill, cilantro and bulb fennel are in the vegetable garden where they seem to self sow. I often put pots of scented geraniums, lemon verbena, and rosemary by my kitchen door where they smell good as I pass by with armloads of groceries, freshly picked tomatoes, and whatever. They are also handy for last minute additions to the dinner menu!
Many herbs grow just fine in pots and some are better kept in pots. I keep the mint in a pot because in my garden a happy and unrestrained mint is a Pernicious Weed. Another good spot for it would be back behind the garage where it could spread to its heart's content...but that would be too far away to zip out and grab some for garnishing melon or iced tea or whatever. Also near my kitchen door is what I laughingly call my "Gray Garden", which is full of culinary herbs among other things. I have to laugh because although I can and certainly do give other people lovely tight lists of what to grow and where to put their plants, I just can't force myself to do it that way at home. So my garden is sort of a jumble of wonderful things, some areas more formally "successful" than others.
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Barbara M. Martin's Cottage Garden topic, please visit the Discussions page.