Herb Gardens – Favorites and Easy to Grow

June 1, 2014

Herb gardens can add a wonderful and cozy feature to your landscape.  Whether herbs are potted or grown within the landscape ground beds, they are not only beautiful, but useful in recipes.

Chives are a perennial member of the onion family that sport beautiful purple flowers. Chives are cool-season, cold-tolerant perennials that are planted in earlyspring.  Be mindful when planting this herb, as it will take over your garden if the flowers are left to ripen (the flowers scatter the seeds). However, this plant is easy to dig up and move if it overwhelms your garden.  It requires full sun for best results.

Dill is an annual, self-seeding plant with feathery green leaves. It is used most commonly in soups, stews, and for pickling. Dill is easy to grow and attracts beneficial insects to your garden, such as wasps and other predatory insects.  It requires full sun as well for best results.

Fennel is often classified as both an herb and a vegetable, and can be used in many ways in the kitchen. It’s also a popular plant among herbalists, and has been used for thousands of years as a natural remedy, most commonly for digestive problems.

Fennel has a wonderful anise flavor that works well in both savory and sweet recipes. It’s a popular ingredient in Mediterranean cuisine. The bulbs are commonly roasted or grilled or added, raw, to salads, and the feathery fronds can be added to salads and soups to impart a more delicate fennel flavor.

There are two types of fennel that you may want to grow in your garden, depending on how you plan to use it. ‘Florence Fennel’ is used more like a vegetable and is grown for its bulbous stem. “Herb fennel,” doesn’t really produce much of a bulb, and it is typically grown for its foliage and used like an herb.

Rosemary is a perennial evergreen shrub with blue flowers. It is a pungent and distinctive plant with a sweet, resinous flavor. Rosemary is ideal for a rock garden or the top of a dry wall. It is used for poultry, lamb, stews, and soups.   Again, this herb loves the sun and sandy soils.

Parsley is a biennial plant with bright green, featherlike leaves and is in the same family as dill. This herb is used in soups, sauces, and salads, and it lessens the need for salt in soups. Not only is it the perfect garnish, but also it is healthy; it’s rich in iron and vitamins A and C.   Full sun or part sun for parsley works well.