Designing an Herb Garden

  An Herb Garden Design to Suit your Needs

When starting an herb garden, one of the things you need to decide on is your herb garden design. This means selecting the herbs you will be planting and how you will locate them in your garden.

An excellent herb garden design has a lot of benefits. For one, it is essential to making sure that the herbs you plant are given the right conditions to thrive. Another benefit is you create a garden that is pleasing to look at and easy to care for. And lastly, having a design from the outset will prevent you from making mistakes in placing your herbs.

Designing an herb garden to suit your needs can be daunting for a beginner herb gardener. To help with this crucial first step, consulting veteran herb gardeners and guides like “Healthy Happy Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide to Herbs and Herb Gardening” will really go a long way in making sure you get to enjoy a thriving garden as well as a rewarding hobby.
Designing your own herb garden depends on several factors: lifestyle, needs, overall purposes and personal preferences. Let’s take a look at some of these factors.
Designing and creating your herb garden based on your lifestyle means finding herbs that you have uses for. It also means choosing herbs that you will be able to easily care for given the amount of attention that you can actually give your garden.
For example, you decide that you want an herb garden that will provide you fresh and flavorful herbs for cooking. In this case, your choice of herbs would be those that are used most often in cooking. You may want to plant these herbs in movable containers so that you can put them in your kitchen, where it will be convenient for you to use them.

Some people want to grow herbs for aromatherapy or as raw material for various crafts. In this case, their hobby will influence the types of herbs that they will want to grow in their garden. For aromatherapy, popular herbs are chamomile and lavender.

Let’s say you decide that you want an herb garden design that’s great for entertaining guests. In this case, you may choose herbs depending on how big they grow or if they bear flowers or not. You may also decide to allot a bigger space for your garden and build an outdoor patio for full effect.
 

If you have limited space available for your garden, then you need to choose herbs that don’t grow to big. Herbs that can thrive indoors or in container gardens are excellent choices. Container herb gardening is specially great for those who live in apartments but still want to engage in gardening.

There are also herb plants that you will need to pay special attention to. Take note that chives, lavender and mint are invasive herbs - they tend to spread easily and overrun your garden. So when growing these, putting them in containers and away from your other herbs is important.

Some plants that are grown next to each other tend to influence each other’s properties. For example, tomatoes when planted beside basil or thyme will acquire the flavor of the herb.
You can also choose an herb garden design based on various themes. For example, you can have an Italian theme and plant herbs like basil, parsley, rosemary, oregano, sage and other herbs mostly used in Italian dishes. Or you can also to make a theme out of a certain herb and plant different varieties of it in your garden.
More formal herb garden designs usually involve designing around geometrical shapes with paths, walkways or kiosks. Herbs of various heights are selected for their pleasing and complementary appearance. 

If you are serious about cultivating an organic herb garden, be sure to check out “Healthy Happy Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide To Herbs and Herb Gardening” by Jeannie Woods. It’s a book packed with all the information you need to be able to successful start and keep a thriving organic herb garden. You can read more about it here: http://www.healthyhappyherbs.com.
Please check out Jeannie’s guide.  I know it is full of great ideas. (As an affiliate I receive compensation .)  Claudia

Adam and April’s Landscape Project

New Homeowners Start Landscape

Adam and April have a lovely home.  But the overgrown shrubs and low limbs of large trees in the front yard made it difficult to see.  Soon after they moved in, Adam set out to limb up the pine trees in front, and remove several other trees that were damaged.


 

  Adam and April asked for my help in getting a ‘plan’ together.  The design process was on hold until we determined what they wanted their yard to reflect.  Did they want a formal garden, an English garden, a high maintenance garden, or something in between.  We also talked about the time frame in which they expected to have this project finished. 
This timing issue also is important because a budget needs to be set up.  Lets face it, if you want a lot done next month, you may have to hire some help.  If this plan stretches over 3 – 5 years, then you may be able to do most of the work yourself. 
So Adam and April decided they wanted a casual, colorful garden that was low maintenance.  No maintenance gardens for the homeowner usually requires a gardener, since there is no such thing as a ‘no maintenance garden’. 

 
Adam and April removed the taxis from the front corner and added a compost soil mix to the planting bed.  April also set out to remove some of the border stones that were three high, and spread the extra soil around the roots of the tree.
 
During the deconstruction process, I had April and Adam over to see some plant material that they might want.  They chose some hostas, and other shade plants that we could divide when they were ready to plant. 
Extra watering was needed before we divided some of the plants, as we have had no measureable rain here for months.  Finally, April and I set out to dig!

An ornamental Zebra Grass is taking center stage in the front corner.  Surrounding the grass, we put a variegated liriope.  The green and yellow of both the grass and the liriope really played off of each other in the sun.  The bright purple bloom of the liriope accented the planting nicely.
Next we tackled the base of the pine tree.  Here we planted five green and cream hosta, H. Abba-Dabba-Doo.
We took divisions of  6 – 8 daylilies.  Unfortunately, I could not recall the colors, or the names.  We will try to name them in the spring.  Consequently, we divided out about 40 or so fans, and randomly placed them under the tree.

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I plan to follow Adam and April’s project over the next season or two.  Can’t wait for spring when the new beds will come to life. Follow the basic steps to plan your project and thanks for visiting today.