Starting Your Spring Garden? Say Hello To Heavenly Herbs

Do you love the smell of rosemary? Always stop to look at lilac lavender? Or simply enjoy stroking the soft, velvety leaves of the sage plant?

Whatever your reason herbs are easy to grow, have lots of different uses and can be grown indoors and outside. While the worst of the January frosts and fog are here why not start sketching out your herb garden’s style, traditionally they were planted in an hexagon design, but you should let the shape of your backyard influence your overall design.

When the weather warms up get out there and start digging! Removing any dead leaves and generally clearing a space for pots, or if you’re planting straight into the soil make sure it’s ready to receive the new residents.  

kenna working in the herb garden

Pick Out Your Favourites

There are many different types of herbs, but four of the most popular kinds are culinary, medicinal, flowering and scented. Culinary herbs such as rosemary, thyme, basil, and sage appear in a variety of dishes including roast chicken, onion tarts, and pasta sauces adding flavor and texture to food.

Herbs like parsley, oregano, and even chervil grow quickly, almost as soon as they’re potted, so you’ll soon be cooking with them. Scented herbs like lavender, chamomile, and lemon balm are ideal for making soaps and shower gels with as well as D-I-Y hair infusers. While flowering herbs look pretty and are a great way of brightening up the garden.

Grow Them Big Or Small

The beauty of a herb garden is it can be as big, or as small as you’d like so even gardens where space is limited can have a few pots of rosemary or dill. Herbs tend to be bushy, compact plants that will happily grow even when squashed up so don’t feel like you need to give them loads of space.

If growing them outdoors pick somewhere that gets a fair amount of sunshine, at least four to five hours a day but isn’t too warm. Look for somewhere semi-shaded, near a covered patio or pagoda is good because as patio installers will tell you this corner will have some shelter from the breeze.

Don’t feel like you need to plant your herbs all in one place. However, you may want to keep your culinary herbs together and then pop your flowering herbs closer to the window so you can enjoy their lovely petals.

Herbs For Kids

Remember tiny black seeds, wet tissue paper, and soil when you were a kid? Whether you did or didn’t manage to grow anything herbs are great activities for children as it teaches them about the environment, looking after something and understanding how basic photosynthesis works.

Awesome herbs for kids include mustard seeds, cress, and basil. These herbs require very little work, simply water them gently every few days and watch the little green shoots slowly start to appear.

Make sure that they have plenty of access to sunlight and aren’t accidentally pushed onto the floor if they’re sat on a kitchen, or living room window sill. Once they’ve germinated, simply snip them carefully with a pair of scissors, don’t let kids do this, and then add to potato salad, sandwiches, and egg mayonnaise.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.