Herb Garden Designs

Herb garden designs can be country casual or Old World formal depending on the style of your home and your personal preferences. Ideas can come from almost anywhere, from books and movies to nurseries and gardening magazines.

First Steps in Herb Garden Designs

The first things that you will want to do when deciding on an herb garden design is to choose the types of herbs that you will grow. Are you planning a medicinal herb garden or a culinary herb garden? Perhaps you want to make a tea garden or a potpourri garden; the choice is completely yours. You can even mix several different types in one beautiful conglomeration.

You will need to choose an area with good drainage and at least six hours of sunlight a day.

Medicinal herb garden designs were created and tended mostly by monks and nuns in the Middle Ages. Without the medicines that we know and use today, monks and nuns grew, harvested, and dried herbs and mixtures of herbs to cure all sorts of illnesses.

Medicinal gardens were often designed like a wagon wheel with different herbs in each spoke. A sundial or religious statue might be found in the center of the spoke, surrounded by herbs. Be sure to plant the traditional apothecary rose, Rosa gallica officinalis. This rose was used in almost every herb garden during the Middle Ages to add fragrance, color, and produce rosehips, high in vitamin C.

Common medicinal herbs to plant are:

• Aloe vera
• Arnica
• Calendula
• Catnip
• Chamomile
• Echinacea
• Feverfew
• Goldenseal
• Lavender
• Lemon Balm
• Mullein
• Peppermint

There are many others. You should do a little research to choose the best herbs for the ailments you most commonly deal with.

The kitchen garden is an old fashioned type of garden. It was located as close to the kitchen and scullery area as possible; the kitchen garden had the herbs, spices, and common vegetables that would be used most often in the kitchen. This kept these items handy for the cook to send out a lesser servant to grab a handful of lettuce or a few pinches of basil.

Kitchen gardens are often rectangular and have a bee hive in the center. This was used both for honey and as a way to encourage pollination of the plants. A small fountain would be a nice substitution if you have no interest in keeping bees. Raised beds would be laid out in rows; remember the kitchen garden was designed more for practicality than beauty, although they are beautiful.

Some items you may want to grow in your kitchen garden are:

• Lettuces
• Radishes
• Basil
• Oregano
• Bay
• Chervil
• Cilantro
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Thyme
• Chives
• Garlic
• Fennel
• Dill
• Parsley
• Edible flowers such as pansy.

You should grow mostly what you know you will use but do save some room to grow items that you may not have tried before. Be adventurous!

A formal herb garden could hold any herb, flower, shrub combination. It was often designed in a knot shape with the different plantings of herbs forming the knot. Walkways should be obviously different from the herb beds. Here is where you might want to use cobblestone, pavers, or bricks to create meandering paths through the garden.

A formal herb garden will often have a sitting area with a bench that overlooks a particularly beautiful spot or eye catching bit of statuary. A large fountain may sit at the center of the garden as well. It is in the formal herb garden that bushes like rosemary will be clipped in unique shapes.

The key to a successful formal herb garden design is symmetry. No matter what geometric design is used there must be a sense of symmetry and order to the garden. Herbs will be arranged by height, with the shorter plants to the edges of the beds. Beds will be of equal size and the colors of the plants will be pleasant and balanced.

Planning Is Key

It is most important to plan the herbs you will grow as well as how you will lay out your garden to make it a pleasant place to be. Use graph paper and sketch out the rough shape of your design and then use colored pencils to fill in the plants. This will help you have an idea of how the colors will work together.

Remember that if you don't like the placement of something one year you can always change it the next. The most important thing is to create a garden that you will enjoy.