You may have a good idea already of what you want when thinking about your home herb garden, for instance a lovely cottage type garden with an abundance of herbs packed into every available space. A tidy container garden with herbs grouped according to their type, i.e., annual, biennial and perennial, or maybe an indoor kitchen window sill garden so that you have your favourite herbs to hand when cooking.
Some considerations when planning a home herb garden are:
How much time and experience do you have?
If you lead a busy life you may not have a lot of leisure time to spend on your home herb garden. So even if you have a large garden, a lot of time may be required to prepare it for planting your herbs, are you willing to do that right now?
If you have some experience then you will know that there will be a lot of physical labour to begin with if you are going to do it yourself, turning the soil, removing weeds and stones and mixing some fertilizer to prepare the ground. You will also know that a garden will need regular maintenance; weeding, trimming, feeding, watering etc.
Why do you actually want a herb garden?
Do you want fresh, chemical free herbs for cooking? Are you interested in making your own soaps, potpourri or candles using fragrant, aromatic herbs? Maybe you are interested in medicinal herbs and want to explore and experiment with herbal remedies. Whatever your intentions, this will affect the types of herbs grown and where.
Don't worry if you are not sure of the answers to the questions posed, you can get started with just a few herbs and expand your home herb garden later on.
How you proceed is up to you. The smallest herb garden is a single pot of parsley, for example, which you buy from the garden centre, put into a bigger and more decorative pot and place it on the kitchen window sill so that you have fresh herbs for your cooking. At the other end of the spectrum is a magnificent outdoor herb garden with a hundred different herbs, water features, rock paths, garden gnomes (ok, maybe not ;-))and solar lights. So what exactly is your vision here?
If you decide to go for an outdoor home herb garden of impressive proportions, then you need to consider what you currently have. Is the garden where you wish to create it wild and unruly or is it dry and sparse where whatever grows there looks weak and sick. Does it have any large trees creating too much shade?
The wild and unruly garden and the already established garden indicate good soil and growing conditions and you will not have too much trouble establishing your herb garden. The dry and sparse garden indicates lack of moisture or poor soil or both of these. These problems can all be dealt with, for example the garden with large trees creating too much shade needs trees or branches removed so that more sunlight comes into the garden. Monitor how the sunshine moves through your garden, which area of the garden receives the most daily hours of sunshine, most herbs need a fair amount of sunshine, but some more than others, for example parsley can tolerate partial shade.
So initially focus on answering these questions when thinking about designing your herb garden. Even if you have not got any gardening experience, you can have the magnificent, large scale herb garden, just realize that although most herbs are reasonably hardy and forgiving, you will be experiencing a learning curve and you will make some mistakes. Would you be happier to start with a few pots and gain some experience or go for the full monty landscaped garden and learn as you go.
Take a look here for more information about creating and maintaining a home herb garden.
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