Gardening for Beginners - Herbs

Herbs have been used in the medicine cabinet to treat illness and in the kitchen to flavour cooking, for thousands of years. Some are even believed to have magical powers.  Generally speaking herbs are some of the easiest plants to grow - after all, many of them grew wild for years before we began to cultivate them. If you would like to try some rewarding, relatively low cost gardening, planting a herb garden, or planting some herb containers, is a good place to start.

Consider the herbs you are likely to use as these are the ones to plant. 

A mix of annuals and perennials would mean having access to herbs all year round and remember, some herbs can be over-wintered in pots on window sills.

Space might be a consideration and special care needs to be taken with some herb species as they can be aggressive in their growth soon squeezing out other plants. Mint in particular is better confined to a pot for this reason. When planning your herb garden think about having the plants close to the house for easy access for the family cook!

You might want to draw out a plan of your herb garden. 

Having decided which species you'd like to grow learn more about their preferred habitats and their growing tendencies in order that you might plan the ideal spot for them.

There has been a fashion for herbs to be grown in multi-holed terracotta pots. Whilst these look very attractive they are not generally very successful for the plants. Herbs are vigorous plants and need space to develop a root system. Cramming a number of herbs into one pot will mean that the strongest plant will inevitably overwhelm the others sharing the space. Herbs will happily grow in post or troughs, but keep them separate from each other.

Herb gardens can be made to look very attractive and can become a feature of any garden. For ease of picking it is a good idea to divide the herb garden into small growing areas with walkways in between the plants.

Generally herbs need an alkaline soil, the fast growing herbs soft stem herbs need a generous water supply whereas the wooded stem herbs prefer not to be waterlogged.

Herbs are very tolerant and are some of the easiest plants to grow. As with any plant their needs are few - water, good drainage, sunlight and fertile soil.