Herb garden

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I put in a new herb bed. I don’t know what my inspiration was, but I wanted it to be tiered. And round.

I started by sketching it out, and figuring out the dimensions, then calculating the circumference so I’d know how many blocks to get (again, a shout out to my parents for that math degree – that’s twice this month that I’ve utilized it :)). I’ve turned into quite the artist with as much as I’ve been sketching things this year. Honestly though, it does make things a lot easier to put it on paper vs. having a picture in your head and just winging it, which is what I usually do.

Next step was to find a suitable spot in the yard, and prep the site. For me, this involved taking off the top inch or so of sod, and levelling the scraped area, since it’s on a slight slope. I also put down some sand as a base. Then just put the pavers down. It always seems to take a little tweaking when I’m doing round things to get a good circle, but after a few adjustments, we got there. For the inner circle, I put down a few concrete blocks as the base to provide the elevation I wanted. Finally, fill with soil and plant. So far I have a lot of the basics: basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary, savory, marjoram, cilantro, dill, and tarragon. I’ll add some mint eventually, but seeing as how invasive that can get, I might just find a corner of the yard and throw it there. Any recommendations for others from the herb connoisseurs out there?

For scale in the picture below, the lower circle is about six feet in diameter, and the upper about two feet. It’s also close to the rest of the garden, and right outside the door from the kitchen, so freshness is always within reach.

An addendum to the previous post: on Saturday, I lost another parsley plant. Being angry at this point, I dug until I found a nice fat cutworm. I mention that it was fat so you can visualize the mess that it made when I brought my foot down upon it. C was with me, but I didn’t shield his eyes. He needs to become accustomed to some of the harsh realities of gardening, and it’s better to start him early.