Easy Guide to Herb Garden Designs

 In the past herb garden designs were dictated by the herbs planted in them and classified as useful or ornamental. Truth of the matter is you can mix and match the following ideas to originate your very own special herb garden designs. It's your garden after all and like art these designs express your unique inner soul.

Yet, contrary to expectation, the first step in creating your herb garden designs is not to immediately draw your designs but to first list down the reasons for which you want to have your own herb garden.

Once you have your reasons listed down you can then match against those reasons, the herbs that will provide you with the solutions for your bespoke herb garden designs. Consider at this stage:

o their usefulness (for cooking, herbal remedies for ailments, for decoration in the house and so on)

o their looks, colours and fragrances and how you can group them together according to good herb gardening principles.

o their size and height - for deciding which to plant in front of which.

o the location and size (length and breadth) of the garden and how the plants can fit into that space aesthetically.

o how you would arrange the plants in the garden on the basis of their attributes and environmental requirements.

For your herb garden designs, you can decide on how your herb plants can be grown,

o in the ground in a formal structure or informal and casual, according to their purpose like the kitchen garden outside the kitchen door.

o in pots that are casually arranged on the patio

o in designer or specially constructed containers indoors or outdoors

o in single containers like:
o a windowsill box
o a ceramic or terracotta "strawberry" pot
o an herb garden kit.
o Even an old chimney pot can make an attractive display.
o You can use old tyres, cracked teapots, old pails, etc. Be selective though as the containers used will set the tone of the garden.

After jotting down all your requirements it is then time to put them together into the visualisation of the herb garden designs that will meet most if not all the needs you have written down.

Take your time and pleasure in creating your herb garden designs in your imagination. The more time, thought, colour and movement you visualise, the more real your vision becomes and the more useful and beautiful your garden will turn out to be for you.

The physical aspects of your herb garden designs can be:

o Large, formal and structured - utilitarian or ornamental. This is usually a walled garden that is rectangular in shape and divided into two parallel rows which are then subdivided into a number of beds that will each hold a specific group of herbs.

You can also divide the plot up into a number of squares or rectangles or even triangles laid out in a simple pattern to fit into the plot of available land. There could then be pathways cut out, normally in a symmetrical design that has the specific purpose of allowing easy access to each herb bed.

It would not be unthinkable to have a kitchen garden in a formal setting that incorporates a healing garden in the centre of it.

o In medieval times there were herb garden designs created purely for pleasure. The gardens may be smaller in size, probably a little structured and housed plants that had been chosen for their aroma and beauty, a place where one can sit down to enjoy the sights, sounds and scents.