About The Vegetables And Herbs Growing

Formal herb gardens are traditionally round or square, often with a clipped, dwarf evergreen hedge round the outside as a year-round outline, something architectural, such as a sundial or container, in the middle, and a tapestry of herbs filling the remaining space. Alternatively, you can design something more complicated, based on a knot garden, with gravel paths in between the beds, and clipped rosemary or lavender making the scented outlines of the knot’s pattern.

In an informal herb garden, you can make mixed borders using woody, perennial and annual herbs, just as with ornamental shrubs and flowers. Don’t limit yourself to culinary herbs, which can look terribly green — add medieval medicinal plants, such as lavender, foxglove and the apothecary’s rose (Rosa gallica var. officinalis) to give the garden a bit more color. You could also bring in other useful plants — those that attract butterflies, bees or beneficial insects — without losing the thread of your herbal theme.

Herbs are also good for contemporary gardens; they look as much at home growing in containers made of stainless steel or other non-traditional materials, surrounded by pebbles or glass nuggets, as they do in traditional terracotta. The strong green shapes of herbs, combined with their scent and, in some cases, clippability, make them a good foil for way-out designs and unusual surroundings. So long as the growing conditions are right, they’ll be quite happy.

The majority of herbs, and especially the culinary ones and the aromatic herbs, such as lavender and rosemary, are natives of the Mediterranean and grow best in warm, sunny conditions with very well-drained soil. It doesn’t have to be particularly fertile, but I would recommend adding lots of grit to keep the drainage up to scratch. These herbs really don’t like too much winter wet standing around their roots. There are lots, though, that are bone hardy and that thrive in wetter soils and some that even tolerate some shade — most of the mints and sorrel come into this category.