Growing Herb Gardens ~The Herbs I grow

As you are planting your garden this spring you may want to consider growing herb gardens too. Consider the herbs you use in cooking and try planting them. Or maybe you use certain herbs for health reasons, try planting them.

I don’t have one garden designated to herbs. Instead they are in many different places around our house.  When it comes to growing herb gardens, I plant herbs where they will grow well. Another thing to consider is that some herbs have more than one purpose.

Growing Herb Gardens ~Why I grow and why:

Echinacea: Echinacea is a beautiful perennial flower that many grow in their flower beds. Also known as the purple cone flower, echinacea is a great immune booster and when you are coming down with a cold or virus, echinacea tea is amazing.

I wrote a little more about echinacea here. This beautiful flower lives in my flower bed with other flowers like daisies, and black-eyed susans.

Spearmint: Spearmint is a fast growing perennial that will take over entire areas if you let it. There is a corner of our yard where the mower cannot reach and our solution was to plant spearmint. Spearmint keeps weeds out and the mower keeps it from spreading into our yard.

Spearmint is amazing for cooling summer teas. I also drink it in my pregnancy tea as well. It can help hide the bitter flavors of other herbs. Once you plant mint, you can expect it to come back each year.

Red Raspberries: I shared one of our reasons for growing them right here. Not only are the berries great for eating, the leaves make a wonderful tea for pregnancy. Supposed to help strengthen the uterus and help with labor, red raspberry leaf tea has a great taste even when you are not pregnant. 🙂 (Just ask my hubby!)

Basil: While I’m sure basil has many herbal properties, I have to admit that I grow basil for the taste alone. We cook enough Italian that fresh basil is a great addition to my dishes. I use it to make basil pesto, and now that I have my dehydrator I will be drying some as well.

We usually just plop a couple basil plants into a flower bed somewhere, the bushy shape and shiny leaves make it look as though it fits right in. Basil is an annual: plant new each year.

Cilantro: Same as the basil, I use it for cooking. Cilantro is what makes both Mexican and Indian dishes so yummy. I also use a great amount of it in my homemade salsa.

While not as pretty as basil, we usually plant the cilantro in a flower bed as well. Cilantro is an annual: plant new each year.

Nettles: We do not grow nettles in our gardens. I want to but hubby totally vetoed it. I can understand why, but after reading how great nettles are and starting to add it to my pregnancy tea; I really appreciate the wonderful qualities of that stinging little plant.  Maybe in the future we will grow them, until that happens we will need to find them in the wild. 🙂

Lavender: Lavender is a fragrant herb well known for it’s relaxing properties. A soft smell that is soothing to the nervous system and is great for your skin.  It’s also a beautiful plant that we have in our flower beds. Lavender is a perennial, coming back each year.

Chives: A crisp onion like flavor, makes chives a great addition to many dishes. They have pretty pink flowers on them which makes it easy to plop a plant or two right into a flower bed.

Currently our chives are growing on one end of our raspberry bed. Chives are also perennial so they will be there year after year.

There are many other “kitchen herbs” we could grow, but due to our limited space, I only grow what we really use a lot of. What I would like to grow sometime is Lemon Balm. It has such an amazing smell to it, but I’m not sure how to use it. I wouldn’t want to eat lemon balm, but I would like to make a cleaner with it, it smells so very fresh and clean. 🙂

If you are feeling creative and don’t have ground space, you could make this Free Standing Pallet Herb planter. I have to admit that it’s pretty cool!

Growing herb gardens are not that hard, basically you decide which herbs you want and start finding ways to plant them. Pinterest even gives a lot of great ideas for growing herb gardens inside!