Create Your Own Herb Garden

Herbs can be used to heal, add flavour to food and are beautiful to look at. As many are also easy to grow, why not add some to your garden, says Camilla Phelps

- Camilla Phelps

Herbs were among the first plants grown to soothe and heal body and mind. Herb gardens started out as a living store cupboard of plant remedies and flavours used for everyday cooking and the curing of ailments.

Herbs are traditionally defined as ‘a type of plant whose leaves are used to add flavour in cooking or for medicinal remedies’, with no real consideration for their ornamental potential. It seems a humble job description for plants that can add so much more to the garden.

Whether you have room for a dedicated herb garden, or only space for a window box or planter, or want to incorporate scent, texture and wildlife-friendly plants into a border, herbs are beautiful, useful and essential plants. They are also easy to propagate and grow from seed, so they are a great plant for new gardeners.

The traditional palette of shrubby herbs of Mediterranean origin spans a range of gentle grey-greens and purples – think sages, thyme, French or English lavenders, catmint, rosemary and santolina. The aromatic leaves have herbal properties, but the foliage textures and colours complement each other, and as they like the same growing conditions they are perfect partners. But all work well individually and look great mixed through a hot sunny border as a foil to flowering perennials.

Curly parsley and chives