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As a landscape designer, I feel compelled to share with you a few of my own personal herb gardens and the design process I went through.
My favorite herb garden is the one I had installed in the front yard a few years ago. Instead of using the plants as the major feature, I used a strong geometric pattern formed by putting 2 x 12 boards in the ground in a ray pattern. For the focal point in the middle I placed a birdbath. I got the wood for free from the lumberyard since they had been cut off the end of larger boards that had been milled for other projects. (It took six months of visiting lumberyards, but it was worth it.) The boards were cut into long wedges and scored on the back with ⅛-inch-deep grooves to prevent them from cupping. They were then laid out in a ray pattern and secured in place by two layers of bender board nailed to both sides of the circle. I used all sorts of culinary herbs around the outside and toward the middle: thymes, oreganos, lavenders, tarragon, lemon balm, and chives, along with a few salad greens and disease-resistant roses. Within a year the ground cover had filled in and the plants looked mature enough to make it a magical garden. We still refer to it as the Magic Circle (see pages 24—25).
Another herb planting I enjoy is the herbal entry up my front steps and walk. In this case, while the steps and walk add design interest, it's the herbs and flowering plants that get the attention. I chose purple, yellow, and light pink as the color theme and filled in other parts of the garden with lots of variegated herbs. I think their white-and-green and white-and-gold leaves make a perfect foil for the deep hues of yellow and purple. I chose variegated lemon thyme, golden and tri-color sage, and golden oregano as the stars of the front border and added yellow violas in the spring and yellow species marigolds in the summer.
The McGee Herb Garden
Rose Marie Nichols McGee grew up in Oregon next door to an herb nursery. Maybe I can be forgiven, therefore, when I say that she knows herbs from the ground up. For years I ordered herbs from her parents' company, Nichols Garden Nursery, and it seemed natural to contact them when I was searching for knowledgeable people to share information on herbs.
Rose Marie and her husband now own and manage the nursery, and she was very enthusiastic about growing a demonstration garden for me. She 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
