’Ow my ’erbs ’ave gone ’aywire

First, a trigger warning: if you’re American, you may find the contents of this column a bit bothersome. The last time I wrote about Americans – and their culinary ’eritage – it got right up the nose of a long time Sunday Star-Times reader who ’ad a go at my sense of ’umour, declaring it (a) offensive, (b) racist and, ’orrifyingly, (c) not the least bit funny.

Though Donald Trump has made Americans fair game for global derision, my particular beef has nothing to do with the political farce of his presidential campaign. I refer instead to the peculiar Yankee ’abit of pronouncing herbs as ’erbs.

Why the need to hush the h? History suggests the French did it first. In medieval France, a herb was known as an erbe and, when translated into ancient Latin, erbe morphed into herba but retained its silent h. When America was subsequently settled by resource-plundering European expats, I reckon they just wanted to sound posh, like champagne swillers who persist in ordering bottles of Mo-aye instead of Mo-et.

Sometimes, it’s just more fun to sound like a snob. As I say to my husband, ‘‘I’m just popping out to the parsley patch to pick a bowl of fresh ’erbs for our supper.’’

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme: I grow all the traditional herbal mainstays. In fact, I grow three varieties of parsley (Italian, curly and parsnip-rooted), four types of sage (common green, purple, golden and pineapple-scented), tall and prostrate rosemary plus seven types of thyme including common English, lemon, silver, golden, woolly, creeping and pizza thyme.

Usually I plant herbs destined for the kitchen in orderly beds or neat rows but this year I’ve gone rogue and put in a generous naturalistic border where bushy blocks of mass-planted oregano and coriander will rub shoulders with clumps of garlic chives, ‘Florence Nightingale’ fennel, French tarragon and dainty dill. After all, herbs – or any other plants for that matter – don’t naturally line up in military formation in the wild, so why plant them like that?

This style of informal herb garden design, in which plants are woven together to showcase their contrasting textures and forms, is known as tapestry gardening and the French were particularly good at it. The h in herbs wasn’t the only formality they dispensed with outdoors; their famous vegetable gardens, known as potagers, were riotously romantic affairs, a happy shambles of intermingling flowers, salad greens and trailing vines compared to the rank and file rigidity of the average British vege patch.

The tapestry effect is easy to achieve in a pot as you can simply shove all your herbs in together and let them battle it out for supremacy. Just be aware that, in moist soil, mint will always win, with lemon balm fighting the good fight for second position.

On the whole, herbs are fairly forgiving unless you get the soil conditions wrong, in which case they’ll either rot out or race straight to seed. With this in mind, it’s best to group herbs according to their drought resilience. Plant lavender, oregano, rosemary, sage, the silver-leafed curry plant Helichrysum italicum, tarragon and thyme in sun-baked spots and, once established, water infrequently if at all. Chervil, chives, coriander, dill, fennel and mint all prefer moist soil and some respite from the hottest summer sun while basil – that most temperamental of Italian prima donnas – likes it both ways: hot on top but with a cool root run.

Keep your scissors handy because, left unchecked, herbs quickly develop a dishevelled demeanour. They grow tall and fall over, or end up bald in the middle. Cut them back hard to keep them neat and bushy.

I’ll have to take the hedge clippers to my new tapestry herb garden. It has 25 clumps of coriander, a dozen dollops of golden marjoram and enough curly parsley to meet the tabbouleh needs of every kebab joint in south Auckland, but that’s not the point.

‘‘What is the point of all those ’erbs?’’ asked my ’usband. ‘‘And ’ow is anyone supposed to get into the middle to actually ’arvest any?’’

‘‘I’ll do a Donald,’’ I shrugged, ‘‘and just grab whatever takes my fancy within reach.’’

lynda.hallinan@fairfaxmedia.co.nz