Introduction to Designing Your Herb Garden
Now that you've chosen which herbs you would like to plant, you can start considering herb garden design. The design of your herb garden should suit both your personality and the purposes of the garden. For example, many people choose to grow herb gardens for ornamental purposes, such as herb-flower gardens. This means they are likely to choose classic English garden designs and flowering herbs.
Remember that when learning about your herbs, things like leaf color, texture, size, flower color, plant height and width should all have been noted. These details will now be taken into consideration when designing your herb garden. To give a simple example, you don't want to grow a five foot tall lovage herb next to a puny little one foot parsley plant. Your parsley plant may not get enough sunlight, and the lovage roots may affect those of the parsley.
There are several types of herb garden designs, and each one caters to a different lifestyle and different type of gardener. To start designing your herb garden, consider how much space you have and where you live. If you have a large yard to work with, you can consider some of the more classic designs. If you have a large house, you can consider designing an herb garden around your home. Living in the city, or in a building may limit your herb garden design a bit, but you can still have an herb garden!
To start considering designs, make a list of the herbs you want to have in your garden. Place them in a chart, listing down size color, leaf shape, texture, etc. Use this list to design your garden. Either pattern your plants after classic existing designs or create your own design. Remember that size is something you must give great consideration to!
Though you have a free hand at garden design, there are some ways to assure yourself that your garden will be pleasant to look at. The first thing to keep in mind is to choose three dominant colors (whenever possible) and work from there, making sure the colors blend well. For example, the red flowers of pineapple sage will go well with orange calendula and yellow St. John's Wort. This creates a lovely spectrum of colors. In much the same way, lavender, blue hyssop, and a pink colored sage will create lovely tones of violet in your garden.
Once you have your three colors, highlight them by setting them against dark green or bright green leaves (depending on how vibrant you want your colors) by using basil or coriander. You can also go for bronzed tones that you can find in fennel. Silver artemisia makes a lovely background plant for flowering herbs too. Remember to consider leaf texture. Too many flat leaves are boring, so combine long thin leaves as well. Keep your coarse leaves on the outer parts of the garden for accents.
If none of your herbs are flowering, go by leaf color and texture. There are some lovely herb gardens that have waving shades of green leaves and textures. Just because you only have one color to work with doesn't mean your garden will have a flat look to it. You can still create movement and life with varying shades of green.
Next Article: Classic Herb Garden Designs: A Geometrical Garden
