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Everything you need to create your own herb garden, according to an RHS expert
With indoor and outdoor ideas, prepare to release your inner green-fingered pro
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Your support makes all the difference.Did you take up gardening in lockdown? You’re not alone. A poll of 2,000 adults shows that growing fruit and vegetables were among the top 40 hobbies people took up over the course of the pandemic.
“Gardening combines exercise and activity and is well known to boost wellbeing, along with the restorative power of tending and caring for living things,” said Guy Barter, chief horticulturist at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), for our guide to making the most of your garden.
He added that there is also “the beauty and charm of flowers and gardens to raise the spirits, and the pleasure and satisfaction of growing and eating your own food”.
If you’re driven by a love for cultivating your own produce, creating a herb garden is a great option and is perfect for both gardeners and cooks alike.
Easy to grow in beds, borders, containers and even on windowsills, they provide the ideal way to add flavour to your favourite dishes and fragrance to your outdoor space.
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With a full range of seeds and plants on offer, it’s possible to have a year-round harvest, saving you money on expensive supermarket produce.
If you’re looking to get growing, we’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks for herb garden success. From identifying annual and perennial herbs to creating the perfect soil conditions – here’s everything you need to know.
You can trust our independent round-ups. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Annual vs perennial herbs
The first thing to consider is the herbs you want to grow in your garden – perennials are considered the easiest to cultivate and care for, and you can often buy these in pots. They include mint (£1.25, Ocado.com), thyme (£1.25, Ocado.com) and rosemary (£6.99, Crocus.co.uk).
While perennial herbs will harvest all year round, annual herbs will complete their life cycle in a season – these include parsley (£2.99, Amazon.co.uk), coriander (£1.99, Amazon.co.uk) and basil (£2.29, Amazon.co.uk) – and should be planted from the seed.
These require hotter climes and can flower if they do not have the right conditions (for example, if they are not watered regularly or have too much sun).
How to plant herbs in soil
If you’re unsure where to plant your herbs in your garden, Barter suggests considering how convenient the spot is to the kitchen, so as to have easy access while cooking. But it’s also a good idea to bear in mind the soil and light conditions – while herbs are easy to grow and don’t require much interference, they typically thrive in sunny, sheltered locations with well-drained, fertile soil with plenty of organic matter.
If you’re planting potted herbs, the general advice is to begin by raking your chosen spot. A rake is more than just a tool for keeping your garden neat and tidy – it can also remove matter that can be home to pests, providing the best possible conditions. If you’re yet to acquire a rake, or are looking to give yours an update, we’d suggest opting for this Spear and Jackson neverbend professional lawn rake (£33.23, Amazon.co.uk), which featured in our review of the best.
With its weightiness, it’ll handle “most garden raking duties with aplomb”, noted our writer. And the “long hardwood shaft gives it balance to help ease you through long autumn raking sessions”.
If your garden contains a high proportion of clay in its soil, we’d recommend adding some compost (£9.04, Amazon.co.uk) to loosen it up. Different herbs thrive in different soil consistencies: for example, coriander or parsley prefer soil that is fertile and retains moisture, while rosemary thrives in gritty, drained soil. If your soil is not suitable for the job at hand, Barter suggests planting in pots, which we’ll get onto shortly.
Once your soil is ready, you’ll want to dig a hole in the ground using a trowel to provide space enough for your plant – we’d recommend using this Sophie Conran long thin trowel (£18.99, Burgon and Ball), which took the top spot in our guide to the best gardening gifts.
“The mirror-polished trowel feels solid and weighty in use, with the hardwood handle providing a sure grip,” noted our writer.
With your hole made, gently remove your herb from its pot, holding it from the root ball to avoid damaging fragile stems, and place it so the top of the root ball is just below the soil surface. Once in place, cover with soil and firm in before watering. This entry-level watering can (£5.99, Wilko.com) is an affordable choice that landed itself a spot in our review of the best.
The wraparound handle afforded a good degree of control during prolonged watering, noted out writer. When it comes to watering your planted herbs, remove the rose from the spout and place it on the protruding pommel.
Herbs are versatile and thrive outdoors, but when planting straight into the soil, it’s worth remembering to group like-minded plants together. Thyme, rosemary, lavender and oregano, for example, can be planted together since they like the same environment of plenty of sunlight and generally drier soil.
How to plant herbs in pots and containers
If your soil is not suitable for planting herbs directly into the ground, Barter suggests pots as a good alternative, recommending those with a 40cm diameter as a good size. If you’re looking for something cheap and cheerful, we’d recommend this plastic terracotta plant pot (£3, Wilko.com).
“So you are not always watering them, fill with peat-free potting compost (£8.69, Amazon.co.uk) adding 25 per cent by volume of grit to enhance drainage,” says Barter.
As for watering, he suggests you should avoid getting them too soggy and feed them monthly with high potassium liquid fertiliser (£5.50, Amazon.co.uk).
How to harvest and maintain herbs
Now for the best bit – harvesting your herbs for using in cooking (or mint tea). “Cut as required and use fresh or keep for short periods in a sealed container in the fridge,” says Barter.
For annual herbs, such as coriander and parsley, use them up before they run to seed, he adds. If you don’t, he recommends trimming them “regularly so they don’t get too woody”, and that way they can “generate plenty of leafy shoots in the case of shrubby ones, such as hyssop, rosemary and thyme”.
“Store any surplus in the freezer or dried in a dark, airy place. Take cuttings of woody herbs in late summer – they are meant to be short-lived but are very easy to propagate,” he says.
By pruning regularly the herbs will taste better, so we’d recommend getting your hands on some secateurs – “the essential tool for propagation and pruning”, Barter previously told us. As such, we’d recommend reaching the Felco model 2 original secateurs (£47.50, Amazon.co.uk), which were included in our review of the best secateurs and garden shears.
“Many professional gardeners will single out Felco as their go-to brand, with this model being regarded as the best all-rounder for pruning,” noted our writer – meaning that they’re a pair you can trust for keeping your herb garden in check.
How to create an indoor herb garden
If it’s an indoor or windowsill herb garden you’re after, we’d recommend reading our guide to everything you need to start gardening on a windowsill. Our writer reviewed the Veritable Garden classic exky garden (£119, Vertiable-garden.co.uk), which takes the “unpredictability out of herb and vegetable growing, ensuring a crop of healthy greens”.
“This stylish kit features an LED light system to accelerate growth and enhance flavours – which handily adjusts itself depending on the amount of light available – plus two ‘lingots’, which are essentially little soil beds containing plant seeds,” noted our writer. They added that you can “download an accompanying app, so you can check in on the light and water levels of your salad and herbs”.
If you’re unsure of what to plant, the Sophie Conran herb garden set (£14.95, Homeandgardencentre.co.uk) was highly commended in our guide to windowsill gardening. “Containing basil, wild rocket, thyme and coriander seeds, this collection features everything you need to set up your own kitchen garden,” said our writer.
The box also contains “instructions for how to eat your respective herbs, from making homemade pesto to dressed salads”, they added.
Looking for more garden tips? Read our guide to the essential tools you need for spring and beyond, according to an RHS expert