It's not always easy to use tiny amounts of gardening space in ways that are useful as well as beautiful – but some herbs manage to do exactly that. All are easy to get and most aren't difficult to look after.
People who have room for a few containers can find chives the most co-operative and versatile of doorside plants. The leaves of these hardy onion-family plants lurk underground all winter then erupt in early spring, tender and delicately flavoured ready to be snipped into salads, soups or be use as garnishes.
Later round heads of long-lasting pink-purple flowers stay decorative for many weeks or can be picked for a dry vase where (if taken early) they keep their colour for months.
Parsley is another essential kitchen herb. It's best grown from seed sown in early spring, and because it's tap-rooted it is somewhat drought-resistant. The plain-leaf Italian version is said to be tastier, but the curly-leaf kind is much prettier and more popular.
If you let it go to seed in the second year, baby parsley plants will spring up around the time-expired mother ones and you'll have parsley forever.
Oregano is enormously useful for people who do Italian cooking, and if you choose Golden Oregano, it's like having a little patch of sunshine at hand. It's most vigorous and the little bunches you pick and de-leaf for spaghetti sauce soon get replaced – sometimes too vigorously. It seeds around, and you can end up weeding little oregano plants out of neighboring pots. This is best done when you plan to make spaghetti sauce.
Mint is well-loved by English cooks with fond memories of mint sauce and mint-flavoured vegetables. It's very easily grown if you keep it watered. But it's a roamer that seeks out fresh soil while dying, where the previous year it grew most happily.
The way to keep it happy in pots is to cut out one or two pies shapes of old roots and fill those spaces with compost or fresh soil. The old root pieces should be discarded where they won't re-root. They can re-root in compost bins.
Rosemary is beautiful and so useful aside from being not quite hardy. The only variety that can be kept outside in winter is Hardy Arp, which is said to be good down to Zone 6 in a warm, sunny sheltered place. All the others need to be winterized inside. Rosemary handles winter better if it's in dry soil.
As a fragrant, beautiful pot plant rosemary is outstanding. Rex is narrow and has pyramidal dark green leaves and deep blue flowers, Santa Barbara is a trailer that works well in hanging baskets, and Golden Rain has young branches slashed with gold in spring.
Sage is nice pot plant, which keeps its compact shape if you're sure to cut it back in spring as soon as new shoots begin to sprout. Berggarten is my favourite for cooking with its large, soft grey leaves.
Other sages making a nice grouping for gardens (and a tasty sampling for kitchens) are purple, tri-colour and golden sage-variegated. It's safer to mulch them in winter if you're not a coastal gardener.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions. Send them to her via amarriison@shaw.ca It helps me if you give me the name of your city or region.
