I, of course, told him to count me in and said I would be very pleased to create a Culinary Herb Garden. I enlisted my team of garden experts and we set out to redesign the NYBG's historic Nancy Bryan Luce Herb Garden, which had previously been planted with mostly medicinal herbs. Our new design includes more than 50 types of culinary herbs from around the world, including French tarragon, sorrel, English thyme, Italian parsley, Mexican cilantro, Greek oregano, and Japanese saltwort.
All of these wonderful herbs were donated by my friend, Sal Glibertie, who is the largest herb plant grower in the country. It was a fun-filled day with talks from experts in the local and sustainable food movement and demonstrations by world-renowned chefs.
I took part in a panel discussion and then made some of my favorite summer cocktails with an herbal theme. I knew as soon as I woke up, I'd never be able to go from the living room to my office and make that work for real.
Ready to plant an herb garden? Whether you are growing medicinal herbs or planning a kitchen herb garden, herb garden design is a wonderful medley of traditional garden design and vegetable garden design. It uses both perennial and annual plants decoratively, but with a plant palette selected for usefulness.
In our herb garden primer, we touched on combinations of herbs that have similar light and soil moisture requirements and can be therefore be interplanted easily. Here, we focus on specific classic herb garden design layouts: the formal herb knot garden , an herb garden wheel , and the more informal English cottage garden style. We'll also include hints for the container gardener, because a balcony is big enough! The "knot" in Celtic knot gardens usually comes from the knotting of the garden paths.
