How to Design an English Herb Garden

Go with a friendly cottage garden style or plan a more formal design to create an English herb garden. Combine perennial and annual herbs with flowers and small shrubs for a design that pleases year round.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paper
• Paper
• Pencils
• Pencils
• Pencils

1. Design for your tastes and site - plan for herbs you'll actually use and pick a spot with at least half a day of sun for your herb garden. Measure your available space and make a drawing of it on graph paper for a working design.

2. Take a page from traditional English herb gardens - give the bed a focal point for year round interest. Plan for a sundial, bird feeding station, wire obelisk, tall sculpture or trellis at the center of your herb garden.

3. Choose cottage garden ambiance for a friendly herb garden that overflows its borders with flowers. Use any shape - circles and ellipses are popular - for a cottage style bed and define it with a path that circles and bisects it for maintenance.

4. Consider a more formal garden style to make the most of small spaces or to complement traditional architecture. Sketch a rectangle, square or perfect circle in quadrants to be bordered entirely by small shrubs and crossed by paths to separate it into equal planting areas.

5. Draw in paths - an essential element of English herb gardens - for style and easy access on pavers, flagstone or gravel. Make them wide enough to wheelbarrow through and use as many as necessary to reach into the bed comfortably for picking and grooming.

6. Plan your planting in sections that follow the herb garden's basic shape. Space perennials around a cottage bed like the hours on a clock, but put them at the center or rear of each section in a formal style design. Fill between perennials and border shrubbery with annual herbs and flowers.

Tips & Warnings

• Get information about specific herb varieties for your area from your county agent and other local sources so you can design for their size and habits.
• Place potted herbs in the garden bed to control fast growers like mint and still make them part of your design.
• Classic knot garden designs require nearly constant pruning - factor their maintenance in before designing.

[gartengrl]

on 8/18/2009 Many english garden were designed around the idea of growing useful herbs for the household! So it is always fun to mix in plants that can be made into tea or saches when you are choosing your flowers, etc.