I promise you an herb garden...

Once upon a time, the kitchenMage had the herb garden of her dreams. Wisteria draped the entrance arbor, opening onto a herringbone path interplanted with thyme and moss and edged with lavender and a plethora of mints. Herbs, both common and rare, filled this garden and new finds were constantly finding their way there. Rare thymes and more mints than she could name filled the beds, and the air, with intoxicating scents. A few choice trees also lived there: the prized sweet bay, a pink dogwood bent near horizontal from its attempts to survive its old home, and the maples (no two the same) that defined the border.

Oh, I'm sorry! I was daydreaming there for a minute.

While I would love to have that herb garden again (and it is worth a look, although I apologize for the old, not so great photos) the sad fact is that I don't. Worse, I won't have anything like it for a few more years to come. A few summers from now, I expect to once again walk through a garden like that, although not too much like that.

I have a new house and a new "yard" - if one can call close to nine acres a yard - but after two years, the new garden remains unplanted. When we arrived, the little beds around the house's foundation looked like builders had done the planting: some unkempt low junipers and dozens of pansies, in a stunning array of magenta and white-one shade of each. Boring! (When the foxglove and daisies that had been hidden in winter, when we bought the place, first emerged, it seemed fitting somehow that they were also white and purple.)

Frankly, the only thing to recommend the gardened areas was the blueberry patch. The untended space, mostly Douglas firs (originally planted for timber harvest) with fern-laden undergrowth edged up against wild fog forest, has more to recommend it, including the wildlife. At least most of the time.

Call me naïve, but I really hadn't counted on the sheer volume of critters in the yard. In addition to the deer and small creatures common to the cusp of field and wood, there's an elk herd - numbering from a dozen to many times that, depending on how close we are to hunting season - wanders through on their way from on valley to the next. I don't even want to think about what the neighbor's escaped cows did to the poor magnolia!

There was a bit of momentary panic at the thought of doing without any herb garden while I wait for fencing to protect my treasures from marauding beasts before I put them in harm's way. Really good fencing. Luckily, it was winter and I really couldn't do much beyond sulk at the idea of life sans garden. That and watch the critters.

Over the first couple of months, I noticed that nary a critter has ventured close enough to the house to see, let alone nibble, the beds of evergreen blobs and rampant pansies. Go figure.

One day it dawned on me. They never came close to the house.

Those beds, filled with plants I found neither useful nor, truth be told, attractive were rapidly emptied and replaced with an herb garden that, while not quite so poetic as the old one, is wonderfully functional and quite lovely in its own way.

This small scale gardening has also been a learning experience. The prominent location and shallow beds call for plants that are beautiful as well as aromatic and tasty so I have selected colorful varieties of some favored herbs: Tri-color and golden sage, variegated mint and thyme, and golden oregano, along with lots of edible flowers brighten front edges, while a swath of many mints thrives in the back, dry stripe under the roof overhang. My favorite rosemary has a home and creeping thyme softens the hard line between concrete and garden Best of all, there are chive clumps everywhere! And I must admit I love being able to step outside in bare feet to harvest herbs, something that was more difficult in the large garden.

 

 

 

Establishing some plants has been a struggle. The first winter killed all the expensive new tarragon plants and last
winter's freeze/flood cycle took out half of the rosemary yearlings. Those plants sometimes died at the old place too, but with room to plant a hundred rosemary cuttings, rather than a tenth that, half of them dying isn't quite so sad.

 

After two years though, almost everything I need for cooking is here. There isn't a lot of some things, the thyme collection is short a few things (lavender and caraway evade me) and I can't find any lime mint. But there is enough to cook with daily and share with friends. And it is lovely, not looking at all like it was planted as a functional garden. More than one person has commented that it looks like a park.

This garden has also led to my conviction that any small space - even yours - can be transformed into a gorgeous herb garden that will rock your culinary world. Thoughtful plant selection and placement can result in a garden that will improve both your cooking and your yard.

While I know this isn't my old herb garden, it will do for now. In fact, even after the large garden goes in, the little one stays. I just need a cat-sized wisteria arbor.

(my herb garden set on flickr)

Comments

[kevin]

That's it, rub my nose in not having an herb garden.

Although, this past fall they trimmed the trees that kept my place in shade last summer and I'm thinking I might be able to get some herbs to grow on the porch this year. So I'm going to try again.

[Deborah Dowd]

What a gorgeous herb garden! My fantasy has been to have an herb knot garden (unfortunately it is more an herb-not garden!)I end up doing my herb gardening in containers! Thanks for the glimpse into what could be!

[mdvlist]

Oh, how you make me mourn my dark, wet yard and our damn New England winters. We've been in our house less than two years, and last summer, I had my trusty husband put in an herb bed for us, since I was busy with the lead-up to and the aftermath of giving birth. Although the snow has only just melted, it looks like the rosemary and the lemon verbena are goners, despite my mulching efforts-- maybe the mint, too. It's too soon to tell if the lovage and sage will come back, which leaves me with some thyme, savory, oregano and chives, along with my lavender "bushes," which are still too scrawny to bloom. Not exactly anybody's fantasy, but I am harboring a delusional hope for the future. Thanks for letting us leech off of the beauty of your multi-functional foundation plantings!

[kitchenmage]

Kevin, you have no garden as penance for being within a few minutes of lots shopping. Think of me in my garden two hours from a spice store, as you wander through the mecca-farmer-ethnic-specialty markets.

Deborah, I've always wanted a knot garden, although I too have more often had a notGarden (great term! may I borrow it?) What are you growing in containers?

mdvlist, Don't give up hope! It sounds like you have a great start. Besides, you were growing something rather more important than an herb garden. Do you have tarragon? It should grow well there with the hard winters. I hate to gloat, but my lovage is a foot and a half tall already! I'll cross my fingers for yours. That reminds me, I have to check on my savory, haven't seen either winter or summer under the winter overgrowth. So much gardening, so few dry days...

[mdvlist]

Ooo, tarragon is a great idea-- especially when it is so elusive in the stores, and so lovely with chicken. As for your lovage, I know better than to be too jealous. I grew up in western WA, and remember well how everything was eaten by slugs even if it DID bloom two months earlier than it would in MA! But if it's not the slugs, it's something else. I'm still trying to figure out how I managed to kill rhubarb in a matter of months. I thought it was one of those great-great-grandmother plants that grows happily by itself in a weedy corner of the old homestead, occasionally being mowed down by a tractor, until somebody notices it after decades and clears it a little breathing room and sets to enjoying its bounty. Alas, not in MY yard. So, you see why I need as many fingers as possible crossed for my herbs!