A Kitchen Herb Pot

The front bed of my garden has gone wild. Once devoted to herbs, it has been overtaken by the decidedly tasteless wild marjoram, rose yarrow and that grass-that-will-not-be-named. Add to those a curry plant that is looking sickly, a rosemary that is easily 4 feet in diameter and a lavender that resembles a coast cypress and you have a renovation that is daunting.

Faced with a project that could be tackled only on weekends, and only in captured moments between preparing vegetable beds, transplanting and seeding, I found myself coveting a culinary herb pot.

And why not, I asked myself. This would be a simple solution, satisfying need for fresh herbs through the summer and allowing me to proceed with the herb bed renovation at a practical pace. With many of my kitchen herbs in a convenient pot, I could plant a few of the more esoteric or magical herbs and find spots for the perennials I seeded this winter with such reckless abandon (all germinated and accounted for, thank you very much)!

And so it came to pass.



A project like this is a gardener’s dream. I put it together in less than a couple of hours (not counting the leisurely pleasure of herb selection at the local nursery).

If you are looking for a thoroughly gratifying garden project, here follows my recipe for kitchen herb pot. Like all good recipes, it can be modified to suit individual tastes.

1 half whiskey barrel
Garden Bloome Potting Mix
Many herbs of your choice

I selected the following for planting around the edge of the pot (from the top clockwise):

Italian oregano
Caraway thyme
Lime thyme
Garlic chives
Silver thyme
Chives
Oregano thyme
Culinary thyme
Lemon thyme

In the center I planted

Tricolor sage
French tarragon
Purple sage
‘Rachel’s Gold’ sage

(In case you are wondering about the conspicuous absence of parsley, chervil and other shade tolerant herbs, well, that is a container story for another day.)

Last night’s dinner marked the official opening of the new kitchen herb pot. I had recently picked a batch of asparagus and had lovely new herbs just a few steps away when, in a bit of serendipity, a recipe for Herbed Asparagus Orecchiette appeared in an email! I snipped sprigs from the lemon, lime, silver and culinary thymes and substituted Italian oregano for marjoram. The dinner experience was a ringing endorsement of the new herb garden annex.