Planning Your Herb Garden The Right Way

By: Mary Hanna

This article is dedicated to planning a successful herb garden. If you have planted herb gardens in previous years this will help to revamp and refresh one already have.

Go to your Garden Center and see what herbs are available and suitable for your area. This is important if you are planning an outside herb garden. If you are planning an inside herb garden, since you control the atmosphere, you can choose whatever you like.

My suggestion here would be to select a theme for your herb garden. You can plant them for culinary, cosmetic, medicinal or fragrance use. Be realistic about your plants. Check your whole property to find the right spot. Look for sun or shade, type of soil, and how well the spot drains. These are all very import for picking the best place for your herb garden.

Once you have accomplished the above, pick your sunniest spot because herbs need a lot of sun (a good four top six hours daily). Be sure that the herb garden site is level and sheltered from wind. If your soil is a bit heavy ad lots of compost when preparing your site which will make the soil looser and help with drainage and texture.

Try to keep the herb garden close to the house to facilitate in picking the harvest and checking for troubles. If you can’t find a suitable sunny spot plant them in a garden container that you can move around to follow the sun. (This movement is a bit time consuming but it pay off in the end).

Look at the rest of your gardens. Are they formal or informal? You will want your herb garden to complement your house and garden. Look in books or magazine to get some inspiration. If you are creating a formal herb garden you will need to plant in straight lines and geometric shapes framing them with low hedges and paths. A fountain, bench or topiary shrubs are almost always used as the main focal point. Arrange the layout around a central axis. Then plant one kind of herb in each block, go for bold color and texture. Be warned a formal garden is labor intensive and will be expensive.

In an informal herb garden you can plant more flowing, curved beds and walkways. Add flowers and shrubs for a really exciting look. This type of herb garden requires less initial work and will be easier and cheaper to maintain.

Now it’s time to decide on which herbs to plant. The easy way is to make a list of the ones that follow your theme. Make up your wish list in three columns. Column one is the absolutely must have plants, Column two will be the ones that would be nice to have and Column three is oh well, not necessary. If you’re just starting out do between 5-10 herbs, (depending on your space). This makes the herb gardening more manageable.

Know which herb plants or annual or perennial, and make a note of them so you won’t forget. A small spiral notebook is a good place to make comments on the care of each of your herbs. Situate each plant according to height for maximum enjoyment of your herb garden.

Lastly keep them well feed and give them lots of love and you will a beautiful herb garden that is multi-purpose. You get to plant the herb garden, watch it flourish, and then you get to harvest it for whatever your purpose was: Culinary, Medicinal, Fragrance or Cosmetic.

Happy Planting!

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About the Author

Mary Hanna is an aspiring herbalist who lives in Central Florida. This allows her to grow gardens inside and outside year round. She has published other articles on Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at http://www.GardeningLandscapingTips.com, http://www.ContainerGardeningSecrets.com, and http://www.GourmetChefAtHome.com

Tips For Creating a Wonderful Indoor Herb Garden

Cooking meals with fresh ingredients has several positive benefits. First and probably most important is the taste. Some individuals, particularly children, can be pretty picky when it comes to what they'll eat. Parents want to prepare healthy meals that taste great and with an indoor herb garden that's easily done.

If you've ever visited the grocery store in search of fresh oregano, mint or rosemary you know how pricey it can be. All too often people forgo the fresh variety and instead settle on a bottle of the dried herb. If you do this you are losing all the nutritional value of the herb not to mention the burst of flavor fresh provides. An indoor herb garden can fit into any space and it saves the cook a lot of money.

Don't believe for a second that you need a green thumb to be able to grow your own fresh herbs at home. You don't. You simply need a really sunny spot to place the indoor herb garden, some water, a few simple instructions and some tender loving care.

Purchasing the plants when they are already sprouting is one approach that many people take. The reason these fit well into an indoor herb garden is that you can usually begin using the herb within a few days or weeks. Most garden centers will have a healthy selection of plants that are ideal for an indoor herb garden. The best time of year to buy them is during the spring and summer months.

Some people decide to jump onto the fresh cooking bandwagon once winter rolls around. If you decide in the frozen cold of November that you want to begin growing some herbs inside you can. Many websites offer year-round availability of plants that can be used in an indoor herb garden. You simply pay to have them shipped right to your home. Once they arrive you will have an already growing indoor herb garden that you can enjoy throughout the winter and the rest of the year too.

A less expensive route but one that requires a lot of patience is planting the seeds and growing the plants yourself. This simply requires pots, potting soil and the seeds. If you enjoy gardening to this degree and you are not in any rush to enjoy your indoor herb garden, this can be a rewarding approach.

Regardless of which approach you ultimately take you can certainly take advantage of the warmth of the summer sun and put your indoor herb garden outside for a few weeks. This won't harm the plants in the least as long as you bring them back indoors before the frost arrives.

Percy Troughton's runs his own garden center as well as running several shopping based websites. His particular speciality is gardening. Check out these great Flower Garden tips and articles or Garden Tools tips and articles.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Percy_Troughton

Herb Garden Design

By Bill McRea

Since ancient times, large gardens have been used for growing vegetables, flowers, fruits and medicines. These gardens are called herb gardens. Some common plants grown are rosemary, parsley, sage, marjoram, thyme, mint, rue, angelica, bay and basil. Herb garden designs can be useful or ornamental depending on the kind of plants grown in them.

Herb garden designs of medieval and Renaissance Europe period are a big influence for herb gardeners today. Practical as well as ornamental, formal herb gardens laid out in simple beds date back to medieval Europe and continue to be popular today. It is very easy and inexpensive to maintain a herb garden. By practice the herb gardener can be an expert. Keeping in mind the modern times, herbs used can be differentiated as:

• Culinary herbs

• Medicinal herbs

• Ornamental herbs.

Culinary herbs are the most popular herbs like rosemary, parsley that are very easily grown and contains both annual and perennial varieties. You can also grow medicinal herbs but extracting the medicines from them is not an easy procedure. Ornamental herbs are the otherwise useless herbs, which have shown to have no medicinal value, but because of their beauty or just to add soft foliage to the garden they are still grown.

Traditional herb garden designs do not always suit our modern needs. Some of the preferred designs today are as follows:

• Herb container gardening

For beginners, container herb gardening is the best bet. They are very easy to manage and are flexible enough to be changed often. Pots or containers of different color, pattern and texture add a character to an otherwise dull and green garden. Some herbs like rosemary, which are better to keep indoors during winters, can be brought in without any fuss. Containers are easy and fun to use and soil mixtures can be adjusted without much hard work to suit specific plant needs.

• Raised bed herb gardens

Somewhat related to container herb gardens, raised bed gardens are a great herb garden design technique which allows us to amend the soil, since many herbs require more drainage than what the soil can allow. Plants like mint or weed can prove troublesome if planted loosely without planning, and this is where raised bed herb garden designs help.

• Parterre

This design gives the garden a formal and elegant look. You have to simply segment your garden into different areas for different herbs you plan to grow and hedge them in. The most popular plant used for hedging is the dwarf English boxwood. Large boxwoods can be used at the corners and junctions to add height and visual interest and a sculpture or sundial would give a nice finishing touch. Planting of herbs in threes and fives allows the eye to register the plant and move over to other groups without troubling our vision. This is a common technique used in most herb garden designs.

• Roses

Roses are one of the earliest and original inhabitants of the herb gardens. They prefer drier and sunny conditions and the foliage of the herbs provides a perfect foil for the rose blossoms. Rosa rugosa is a great rose for the herb garden both historically and aesthetically.

Herb garden designs are not too hard to maintain and can be done even by a beginner who would acquire the skills in the process. All level of skilled gardeners can try their hand in herb gardening and enjoy its simple yet effective results.

Gardening and landscaping are one of life's simple joys. Learn more about Herb Garden Designs by visiting our Garden Facts web site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bill_McRea