The Edible Herb Garden. Rosalind Creasy
saw it as a great excuse to put in a small herb garden for her mother. Her mother has been hampered by arthritis for some years and missed having a garden. What a wonderful little garden the new one turned out to be! Rose Marie cut a modified kidney-shaped area, about ten by twenty feet in size, out of an existing lawn and filled it completely with herbs. The idea, she told me, was to make "an informal and inviting little oasis, with paths so my mother—or anyone!— could get right in and enjoy it."
Pink, purple, and yellow flowers give warmth to my herb entry and help tie together the great variety of plants. The walk is lined with yellow species marigolds and gloriosa daisies, purple sage, and pink roses. The herbs include curly parsley, oregano, tricolor and golden sages, winter savory, anise hyssop, society garlic, and dittany of Crete.
The bed preparation was rather straightforward. Rose Marie began in late spring by digging up the area and then, to save a lot of weeding in the future, sifted through the soil to remove all the rhizomes of the weedy quack grass that had grown rampantly in the lawn. She then put on a layer of mushroom compost and hand tilled it in. Finally, to prevent another future problem and to give the garden a clean line, Rose Marie put in a black plastic edging to keep the lawn from growing into the herb bed.
One design objective was low maintenance, which meant making a perennial garden with spaces reserved for annual herbs like basil, calendulas, cilantro, dill, and nasturtiums. She explained: "This year, because it's new, I've added many annuals, but by next year the perennials will fill it in and be in their glory and I won't add many annuals. I enjoy having a constant supply of flowers and color in the garden for most of the season, so I chose many of the flowers to bloom at different times of the year."
Rose Marie decided to start the blooming season with sweet cicely, which blossoms in spring along with the daffodils and has white, lacy, very fragrant flowers. Other herbs that will bloom throughout the growing season include clary sage, which produces great spikes of lavender flowers; regular chives, with their lavender blossoms produced in late spring; Oriental chives, with white flowers that smell like roses and that bloom in July and August; two varieties of lavender that bloom most of the summer; lemon mint, which will provide a lot of color in late August with its shaggy purple heads; and pineapple sage for late-fall color—its scarlet blossoms will brighten up the garden from September until it is cut down by frost and dies. During the first year annual plants yielded much of the garden's color—the purple foliage of 'Red Rubin' basil, orange and yellow nasturtiums and calendulas, and the large yellow heads of dill.
The garden was designed with low edging plants in the front and along the paths, with a gradual increase in the height of the plants toward the middle and back. Rose Marie used as focal points for the design a dramatic angelica plant, with its large spreading leaves and handsome foliage, and two graceful statues of monks made by a local artist.
I asked Rose Marie to talk a bit about how she uses herbs from the garden. "I harvest angelica when it's just starting to bloom," she began, "because that's when it has the most flavor. I don't let the flower heads develop at all. I then simply take the large stems and cut them up and boil them in a sugar syrup. Once they're candied and dried, I chop the stems and add them to my favorite shortbread recipe. Another herb I enjoy is sweet cicely. I use the foliage in salads during the year and the seeds in fruit or green salads. The seeds are tender and have a sweet anise flavor."
Rose Marie Nichols McGee, of Nichols Garden Nursery, created this herb garden oasis in the middle of the back lawn of her mother's house. The garden includes sages, nasturtiums, thyme, lavenders, rosemary, and chives.
There was a great deal of basil in the garden, and I asked Rose Marie how she prepared it. She told me that she and her mother preserve it by chopping the leaves and layering them in a jar alternately with layers of Parmesan cheese and then freezing it. They find that it keeps very well that way, and they sprinkle basil on vegetables and salads and use it in pesto and spaghetti sauce all winter long.
On my last day at Rose Marie's garden, she laid out a marvelous tea party—the very vision of a childhood fantasy, complete with scones with scented basil jellies, shortbread with candied angelica, and lemon verbena tea. All the confections were wonderful, and all were filled with herbs!
Designing Your Herb Garden
You can start herb gardening in numerous ways. For example, a few annual plants of basil, dill, chervil, and cilantro can be spotted around your vegetable garden or interplanted among flowers. In this case little soil preparation is needed beyond what you have done for the existing vegetables and flowers. Adding an occasional perennial herb like lavender, Oriental chives, sage, fennel, and thyme to a perennial flower border is easy too. Just loosen the soil and place the transplant in the soil, water it in and mulch the soil, water it again off and on for the first few weeks, and let the rains (or drip irrigation) and Mother Nature take over. If you are a beginning herb gardener and want to plant just a few herbs in a corner of your yard, then you might consult "Herb Garden Basics" on page 8. However, if you are planning a fairly extensive new herb garden, you will need to prepare the soil more carefully and design the beds for ease of access and for appearance.
The Nichols garden and the Saville garden (shown on page 75) are examples of two completely different layout styles that would work in any garden. The Nichols garden is an informal cluster of herbs in a free-form design located in the middle of a lawn. It is easy to install, and its informality requires little maintenance, as plants don't need to be continually pruned to be kept to a specific shape and size. The Saville garden, in contrast, is a more formal design and will take a few years for the hedges to become established. While certainly not high-maintenance, it will require more care than the Nichols garden. Consider too my herb gardens—an entry garden with steps up the walk, a circular herb garden built around a birdbath, and a streetside herb border. Look too to the dozens of geometric traditional herb garden designs. Whether you choose an informal area on either side of your front walk, create an informal shape in the lawn, or install a formal herb garden off your patio, plan for an area not much more than 400 square feet. This is a good size for most gardeners and gardens. It is a manageable size to maintain and has room for dozens of different herbs. For most designs, first lay out either strings or hoses along the ground to give you an idea of the area and a feel for the size and shape.
My magic circle herb garden is large, measuring forty feet by forty feet, and has room for many herbs and a few salad greens. It is a fairly formal design in that I used large plants to anchor the corners, created a geometric form in the middle, and placed similar colors and shapes of plants in repetitive patterns around the center. If I had wanted it to be more formal I would have used small clipped hedges to circle the birdbath and around the outside. Further, I would have repeated the same herbs in the perimeter beds.
Installing a Formal Herb Garden
If you want to install a traditional geometric herb garden, either of the two following simple and straightforward formal designs are an easy way to start. Mark off an area twenty feet by twenty feet. For the first design (see drawing, page 21, top), create bisecting paths that cut across the diagonal in an X and create four equal triangular beds. Another option is to choose bisecting paths that cross each other in the middle and form a cross, creating four squares (see page 21, bottom). To make both designs more interesting, place a square or round bed in the middle and put a focal point sundial, sculpture, or birdbath in the middle. Paths through any type of herb garden should be at least three feet across to give ample room to walk and use a wheelbarrow. Beds are generally limited to five feet across, as that is the average distance a person can reach into the bed to harvest or pull weeds from both sides. Consider putting a fence, wall, or hedge around the herb garden to give it a stronger design, and to keep out critters if need be.
Designers