Agnes Stevenson on how to get the most out of your herb garden
As winter descends, it’s the perfect time to formulate plans to fill your garden with colour and scent when the warm weather arrives, says Agnes Stevenson
Blue skies, sharp frosts and dazzling sunshine. When autumn gets it right there’s no better place to be than in the garden. But, even when it’s grey overhead, there’s something invigorating about being outdoors as the year starts to draw to an end.
I’m still tackling the long border, uprooting perennials, re-homing shrubs and using a thick mulch of shredded leaves to improve the soil. But, on days when it is too wet or windy, I’ve been drawing up a list of the plants I’ll need to fill the wide open spaces I’ve created.
I already have some of them, including a dozen peonies, bought bare-rooted last winter, that have been waiting in pots. The huge hostas – here when I arrived – just need dividing and spreading around in spring and I’ve enough Alchemilla mollis to cover a football pitch. The back of the border is constantly moist, with heavy clay underfoot, so the plans are to grow rodgersia, astilbe and persicaria, which all love a damp spot in full sun. The soil at the front is much lighter so here I’m hoping to grow agapanthus and even tulips.
And in amongst all of them I’ll plant shrub roses, which I hope will fill this part of the garden with colour and fragrance.
Below this border, separated by a wide path, is a dry-stone retaining wall I’ve decided to turn it into a vertical herb garden.
I’ve already filled some crevices with thyme and these are spreading between the stones. There’s marjoram too and the alpine pinks planted early this year have made themselves at home on the rocky ledges. Now I need to add lavender, grown from cuttings taken earlier this year, along with sage and prostrate rosemary, which I’ll plant at the top to allow it space to sprawl.
Beneath this wall is a sheltered seating area that gets sun from midday onwards. It’s already home to a potted fig tree but next year I plan on adding pelargoniums and jasmine to create a Mediterranean corner. In order to grow as many of the plants as I need, I’ve started drawing up a seed list. It usually takes around two years for a perennial grown from seed to form a decent-sized plant.
So far I’ve selected Penstemon barbatus in coral and purple shades, the white form of thalicturm and Aquilegia “Black Barlow”, which is every bit as dark as its name suggests.
There’s a variety of echinacea called “Pow Wow Wildberry” that I’m struggling to resist and Lysimachia atropurpurea “Beaujolais” is already on the list. But that’s all for next year and there’s still lots more digging and dividing to be done before then.