How to Create a Herb Garden Plan

Why Grow Your Own Herbs?

Modern methods of cultivation and livestock rearing have given us bigger and better-shaped vegetables and better-looking meat, but at the cost of their taste. But we can get a bit more taste back into our cooking by making regular use of herbs, in the same way that our ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years. The right choice of herbs can make the blandest of dishes tempting and exciting - even more so when the herbs are fresh from your own herb garden.

Create a Herb Garden Plan

This article is about to create a herb garden plan that will enable you to grow all the essential herbs for your cooking. Your herb garden plan will provide you with an easily accessible supply of all the herbs you need in very generous quantities.

Don't worry if you have never grown herbs before. It's really not difficult providing you develop a herb garden plan in the way I have described below.

Four Steps to Create Your Herb Garden Plan

1. Choose Your Herbs
The first thing you need to do is decide which herbs you want to grow. If you don’t spend some time thinking about this you’ll end up growing some herbs you don’t need, and leave out some of the others that are essentials for your cooking.

There are 100’s of herbs to choose from that you could include in your herb garden plan. Some thrive in sunny spots and well-drained soil and others prefer shade and damp conditions. A good rule is to choose a sunny spot. However, you need to know about the ideal conditions for each of your chosen herbs so that you can position them correctly in the herb garden you’ll develop once you have produced your herb garden plan.

Start choosing your herbs by writing down a list of the herbs that you are familiar with or that are commonly used in cooking. In your list write the names first, but leave space to also write down the type (annual or perennial), the best position (sunny, shade) and best soil conditions (well-drained, moist etc). Also leave space to include the height that each herb will grow to.

Now extend your list with other herbs. Consider choosing from the following herbs that are frequently used in cooking - sage, tarragon, marjoram, basil, lemon thyme, fennel, chives, parsley, rosemary, bay, garlic, mint and thyme.

You’ll need to do some research to complete your list, but this is a very important step in developing your herb garden plan. When your list is finished it should include the names of twelve or so herbs and the additional information I described above.

2. Choose Location & Decide on a Herb Garden Design
Ideally your herb garden should be near the kitchen so that it’s easy to harvest the herbs fresh when you need them. A good size for your herb garden is 4ft x 6ft. This should enable you to plant all the herbs on your list, including a couple of bushy perennials. Try and choose a spot which is south facing. If some of the herbs you have chosen need a shady spot plan to use the larger herbs such as bay, tarragon, and rosemary to shade them.

The simplest herb garden design to choose is a rectangle, but also think about other designs such as the herb garden “island” and the herb garden raised bed. Or think about creating a long herb garden boarder (good if you have a sunny wall in your garden). Choosing your herb garden design can be lots of fun. Here again, try and do some research on different herb garden designs in your local library or on the internet.

3. Check Soil Conditions
After you have chosen a position for your herb garden you must check on the soil conditions. Although some herbs prefer other conditions, a rich, well-dug, well drained soil is ideal. You may need to dig in plenty of organic matter to enrich your soil, but make sure that it doesn’t contain any weeds, especially perennial ones. If it does, you’ll risk pulling up your herbs when you try to remove the weeds once they begin to grow again.

4. Draw Out Your Herb Garden Design
Now you have chosen your herbs and your herb garden design, draw a diagram of your herb garden on paper (graph paper if you have any). Draw it out to scale. Make one foot of your herb garden equivalent to two inches on your paper.

Now use some different coloured paper to cut out rough circles to represent your herbs when they are fully grown. These circles should have a diameter equivalent to the height your herb will eventually grow (use the same scale of one foot to two inches). You may want to grow more than one of some types of herbs (e.g. sage and basil), so allow space for these as well. You should only need one each of the larger herbs such as rosemary and bay.

Put the cut circles onto your scaled paper diagram and move them around until you have good positions for all your herbs. Some people also take into account the colour of the flowers that the herbs will produce, but I suggest you avoid this complication. Once you have gone through one herb growing season you can easily move your herbs for the following year (but don’t keep moving the perennial herbs).
When you have created your herb garden design, you’ll know exactly where to plant your herbs.

A good tip is to use some coloured sand to create full-size circles on the ground in positions exactly corresponding to those in your herb garden design. This will make sure you plant your herbs in exactly the right spots with the right amount of space around them to allow for growth. Don’t forget to try and take into account the needs of the herbs that want a little more shade.

Summary

Your herb garden plan will enable you create an attractive herb garden that contains all the herbs you need for your cooking. After your first year herb gardening you will probably want to change some of the annual herbs you chose in your original herb garden plan. That’s quite Ok, that’s all part of the fun of herb gardening. You may also want to enhance the appearance of your herb garden with statues or ornaments so that you end up with a kitchen herb garden which looks good, smells good and improves your cooking!