Well-grown herbs look even more stunning when used in a handsome design complemented by walks, walls, or accessories. A design also makes your garden much more than simply a place to grow plants. It becomes a fragrant, colorful, and comfortable outdoor place to sit, read, play, and entertain, and it grows into an asset that increases your property value.

The design style you choose says a lot about your preferences and personality. Try a historical garden if you like a sense of tradition. Or install a classic formal herb garden, a look that never goes out of date. If you prefer to grow a wide variety of plants in a casual way, develop an informal cottage garden. Or tailor a contemporary garden to fit into small spaces or blend in with the rest of your landscape.

Read on in this chapter for ideas on how to pull together a beautiful and effective herb garden design. You'll learn how to make herb combinations that look and grow well together. Then you'll deal with woody plants, the supporting characters that give herb gardens height, structure, and character during winter. You'll be ready to devote some thought to your hardscape -- all the walks, walls, and other built structures in your garden. Then browse through some possible designs, and consider taking what you've learned and adding some low-maintenance features.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

When you know which herbs you want to plant, think about how you can arrange them so they'll look great and grow their best. Consider their color and ornamental characteristics, time of bloom, height, and growth habits. Then imagine how the characteristics of herb will look when combined with another herb. You can plant contrasting herbs in nearby parts of the garden to show off bold and subtle large and small leaves, tall spikes of flowers and low carpets of blossoms. Plan to have enough diversity to make the garden interesting but enough repetition of similar characteristics to tie the garden together keep it harmonious -- not chaotic.

Coordinating Color in Your Herb Garden

A Glossary of Design Terms As you start planning and designing your herb garden, there are some concepts it will help you to become familiar with. Color and texture are key concepts, but consider also the finer distinctions. Colors. Colors make a big impact on the garden, so organize your color scheme carefully. Hue. This is the tint or underlying tones in a color -such as orange-red or yellow-orange. Sometimes, colors that are tinted with hues of yellow, such as salmon pink, don't look great with colors tinted with hues of blue, such as lavender-pink. Complementary Colors. Bold color combinations can combine warm and cool colors using opposites on the color wheel such as red with green, blue with orange, and yellow with purple. Analogous Color. More subtle color combinations use neighboring colors on the color wheel such as orange, yellow, and red, or purple, blue, and green. Texture. This is the distinctive character created by the size, shape, and finish of plant leaves. Coarse. large, full leaves as on lettuce-leaf basil, large, stiffly branched plants such as angelica and lovage are coarse-textured and bold eye attractors. Fine. Narrow, small, or finely cut, smooth leaves such as winter savory, thyme, and dill give a soft look but can become busy if used in quantities. Medium. Moderate-sized leaves such as mint and sweet basil are comfortable to view but monotonous in large quantities.

Herbs come in a wide range of flower and foliage colors, all of which are important to your garden design. Often, the most effective plant combinations come from simple color schemes -- two or three main colors throughout the garden. The colors you choose can be similar or depending on how soothing or vibrant you want the garden to be.

To include a wider range of color, you can divide the garden into sections, as with the Four-Square or Wagon Wheel designs (see p. 63). You can use a different color scheme in each section.

Tried-and-true color combinations, like the ones that follow, look great in any garden. But don't be afraid to experiment. Hold nursery plants close together to see if the combination is visually pleasing, or move your existing garden plants around to create new, more interesting color combinations. Remember, everyone has different color preferences, so there is no right or wrong.

Combine colorful foliage with colorful flowers. The silver foliage of artemisias, santolina, sage, lavender, and other herbs looks good with the cool-colored blue or purple flowers of chives and sage and also with pastel pink flowers.

Bronze- and gold-leaved herbs such as bronze fennel, golden oregano, and golden variegated sage look great with warm-colored yellow, orange, and red flowers such as 'Lemon Gem' and 'Orange Gem' marigolds, nasturtiums, and pineapple sage.

But not everyone is fond of purple- or bronze-leaved herbs. Some gardeners prefer to use purple foliage with discretion. One objection to purple- and dark-leaved herbs is that they become less noticeable when the light fades at dusk or in a shaded site.

Match the color of flowers to highlight color on a variegated leaf. Try 'Pink Ripple' thyme with matching 'Tricolor' sage leaves, or a yellow-flowered nasturtium with golden variegated sage or golden lemon balm. Or use white-flowered garlic chives or white-flowered rosemary with 'Argenteus' silver thyme, white-variegated calamint, or 'Snowflake' scented geranium. Match the blue-green leaves of rue with the blue flowers of borage, blue sage (Salvia Clevelandii), or hyssop. A more subtle combination is purple-flowered 'Marshall's Delight' bee balm with purple-stemmed 'Chocolate' peppermint.

Jim Wilson recommends that to get the best display with the most colorful herbs, such as 'Tricolor' sage, grow them next to a plain-looking herb. One good combination is 'Tricolor' sage with 'Spicy Globe' basil, which forms a neat green mound and grows to about the same height.

Mix herbs with dark- and light-colored foliage if you like a lot of contrast. For example, place a mass of five or seven plants of silvery sage as a backdrop behind five dark purple basil and a couple of yellow nasturtium. Or use 'Silver King' artemisia in the back of the bed, purple perilla in front of it, and 'Silver Mound' artemisia as an edging plant in the foreground. Holly Shimizu highlights purple foliage with silver, blending tall pink-flowered mountain mint with purple-leaved perilla, dwarf gray santolina, and cascading lemon thyme.

If this is too much contrast for your liking, try silver foliage with dark green foliage. Gray or silver herbs such as 'Powis Castle' artemisia beside any dark green plant are a lovely combination. For even less contrast, combine the many shades of green.

Color through the Seasons

An herb garden composed of a variety of interesting kinds of herb foliage will always look good. But you can make the garden look even better if you organize herb companions that will flower in sequence -- spring, summer, and fall (see chart, p. 47). In addition to providing color and cut flowers, most herb blossoms attract beneficial insects that help to keep your entire landscape pest-free. (If you harvest some herbs before they flower, you'll have to leave them out of the flowering sequence.)

Texture

Flowers come and go, but leaves make their mark on the herb garden throughout the growing season -- and sometimes beyond. In addition to the varying shades of green, gray, gold, and purple of some herbs, you can make your garden more satisfying by including herbs with intriguing variations in texture. Texture is the distinctive character created by the size, shape, and finish of plant leaves.

Fine-textured plants are those with narrow, small, or finely cut smooth leaves such as winter savory or thyme. They have a dainty look that softens the garden, but they can become too busy if used in large numbers. Medium-textured plants are those with moderate-sized leaves such as mint and sweet basil. They fill space comfortably, but they can become boring if overused. Coarse-textured plants have large and full leaves as on lettuceleaf basil and large, stiffly branched plants such as angelica and lovage. These make bold eye attractors.

Blend these textures to fit the ambiance of your garden. You can't go wrong if you emphasize medium-textured plants, but highlight them occasionally with clumps of fine-textured plants or small, bold groups of coarse-textured plants. Or, in small spaces, emphasize fine-textured plants with some bolder herbs for accent. In a large garden far from the house, take advantage of a large percentage of large and coarse-textured herbs, which will make the garden appear closer.

Making Masses

If you like the look of one particular herb, magnify it by planting that herb in clusters or large masses that give it extra power through size. Massing is particularly important if you intermingle herbs into landscape beds where they can be lost among large trees and shrubs. Large masses let your eye flow over the entire garden; they don't become busy and chaotic. Set one species or cultivar in groups of three, five, seven, or nine, dependlng on the size of the bed and how much use you have for that plant. Let the mass drift across the background or foreground of the garden.

Getting the Visual Effect Organize herbs roughly by height so the garden will build from low to high and nothing will be hidden. If you'll be looking at your herbs from only one direction -- for instance, if the garden is in front of a hedge or wall -- then you'll want the shorter plants in the front and the taller plants in the back. In a garden that you view from all sides, place the taller plants in the center and the lower plants around the perimeter.

  In my garden, arugula leaves routinely grow to about 6 inches high. But in my friend's garden, they stretch up a lush 10 inches because the soil is so rich. In my Cleveland, Ohio, garden, sweet basil gets to be about 2 feet high. But on Jim Wilson's South Carolina farm, it can get taller. Variations in height are not a rare occurrence. Herbs can and will break the rules.

There are several reasons for this. Rich soil, warm weather, and/or some shade will make some herbs grow taller. Leaner and drier soil in full sun will keep most herbs more compact. So will pinching, shearing, and growing herbs in snug containers. You'll also see variation in height among different cultivars of the same herb, herbs that are grown from seed, and uncommon herbs that have a lot of natural variations.

You'll also find that height is a flexible thing. You can prune some medium-sized herbs shorter and use them as foreground plants. Or, you can cut back some taller plants and maintain them at a medium height. You may also notice, if you have warm weather or rich soil, that some normally low growing herbs may shoot up taller and may reach into the medium height range. Here are some herbs of different heights, with suggestions on how to incorporate them in your design.

Try not to be too rigid when you make tiers of shorter and taller plants. In informal gardens, you can intermingle heights slightly and still maintain the rhythm of gradually increasing heights. Let a ribbon of medium-sized plants snake into areas with low and tall plants. Or frame some beautiful lower-growing herb plants between taller plants so you peer through the opening to see them. You also can put short or medium high, early-spring-blooming plants in the back of the garden, where they'll put on a show while the taller plants are still dormant or just beginning to grow.

Creeping Herbs.
Herbs up to several inches high such as Corsican mint and creeping thyme that shimmy close to the ground can weave amid the stones or bricks in a walk. Pave with irregularly shaped pieces of flagstone instead of rectangular pieces to encourage openings between the stones in which you can plant the creeping herbs.

Low, Edging Herbs.
Lower-growing plants up to about 12 inches tall can line the edge of the garden or rest at the feet of a taller plant. Use small plants with tidy growth habits -- such as 'Spicy Globe' basil, curly parsley, 'Silver Mound' artemisia, Roman chamomile, thyme, lady's mantle, winter savory, betony (without the flowers), gray or green santolina (if clipped), alpine strawberries, dwarf sage, and woolly yarrow -- to form lines and curves at the edge of the garden. Stick with one or two kinds of herbs in the edging to give the garden a distinct form and a sense of unity.

Get to know a prospective edging plant well before you make a commitment to use a lot of it. The perfect edging is one you use in abundance, perhaps parsley or alpine strawberries, because you'll have plenty to harvest. It should also be an herb that stays neat through the growing season -- or better yet, beyond. Some herbs look good at the start of spring but get scraggly later. Others take a long time to regenerate after a cold winter, and their barren stems detract from the beauty of the spring garden. Try to find an edger that avoids these flaws in your climate. You can also look for edging herbs with colors and textures that complement nearby companion herbs. Finally, for a really knock-out edging along paths, choose fragrant herbs that will cascade out onto the walkway and fill the air with perfume when you brush by.

Medium Height Herbs.
Herbs 13 to 24 inches high include most basils, calendula, caraway, German chamomile, chervil, chives, coriander, hyssop, lavender, lemon balm, Mexican mint marigold, sweet marjoram, most mints, Greek oregano, compact rosemary cultivars, summer savory, and sage. These plants can fill in the middle spaces of a broad garden or the rear of a narrow garden. They have enough substance to work well in many other parts of the landscape, as well as in the herb garden.

Tall Herbs.
For this definition, tall herbs include plants over 2 feet high to as tall as 6 feet high. They can be narrowly upright, bushy and vase shaped, or just plain big and bold. This category includes plants such as wormwood, southernwood, bronze fennel, upright-growing scented geraniums such as Citronella and 'Lemon Balm', perilla, Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), roses, most rosemary cultivars, rue, pineapple sage, French tarragon, and valerian. But these herbs may not retain their full height all season long. Lovage, French sorrel, Florence fennel, and angelica, for instance, reach their full height when they flower. Other herbs such as bee balm, yarrow, and borage have the potential to be tall if they don't flop. You may have to support them with stakes, wire rings, or grow-through wire grids to take advantage of their height.

If you work with herbs in the taller range, remember that a tall herb in a narrow bed looks awkward and out of place unless planted near a tall pole, wall, statue, or similar feature. To make the plants look natural, limit the height of the tallest herb to half the diameter of the garden. Keep tall herbs trimmed back to a lower size, if necessary.