Creating Your Own Herb Rock Garden

When I was a kid, I lived out in a rural community and we only had clay soil once you dug about 6 or 12 inches down. When you’re planning your garden, you have got to put sunshine and dirt quality at the top of the list of things to consider. Without the right amounts of both sunshine and water, your garden will not thrive. With the right combination of water, soil and sunlight, you can raise just about anything.

To solve my clay sod problems, I turned to rock gardening, which focuses on adding lots of rocks to your landscape and focusing on plants that only need a few inches of good sod.

If you have got a similar situation, you can raise your own rock garden. Some herbs truly love the rocky craggy earth that you can find in areas like this all over the world. If you do not have the rocky earth and want the aesthetic of a rock garden, make sure you’ve got room for roots to grow and also some good drainage.

Rock gardens focus on keeping the plant compact and controlled. Another tip is to seek out herb plants with silver or gray foliage. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it should help in making the best decisions.

• Hen-and-Chicks: Also known as St. Patrick’s cabbage, Hen-and-Chicks is a succulent perennial that was once thought to cure warts. I cannot imagine cutting open a hen or chick and rubbing it on a wart, but this perennial succulent herb, which is also known as St. Patrick’s cabbage, has a long history of doing just that. Each leaf will hold enough water to make it through a day without water. Your hen will get up to 4 inches across pretty fast. Soon little off-shoots, or chicks, can sprout up from the edges of your hen. You will enjoy the reddish-pink blooms that can appear atop a 9 inch spike that shoots straight up from the center of each cabbage in the summer. The plant will continue to add chicks and grow into a colony of hens-and chicks.

• Wild Oregano: Even though this perennial hails from the warm climate of the Mediterranean Sea, it should grow to about 30 inches tall in your herb garden. You can cook with its green oval leaves and be sure to take full, deep breaths of its wonderful aroma. You will also like the purple flowers, which should bloom in August. Although you certainly may eat this variety of oregano, it won’t quite be the same as the Greek oregano you are familiar with from Italian meals.

• Marjoram: It’s great when you can sculpt a wonderful rock garden using culinary herb plants like Marjoram. It’s a perennial that has a delicate scent with oval gray-green leaves and tiny white blossoms. For marjoram to retain its shape and form, keep it cut back (use the clippings in your Italian dishes) so that it will keep growing well—full sun and the good drainage in your rock garden will help too.

• Thyme: The shiny, little leaves of the thyme herb are clustered along woody stems that are adorned with many white or pink blossoms and grows to a height of up to a foot. Thyme grows best when the sod is sandy, well-drained and gets a whole lot of sun. You will want to keep this one trimmed back to maintain its shape and to help it remain hearty.

Part of the beauty of rock gardens is the contrast of the hard rocks and the soft herbs. The difference in colors also helps in achieving a sense of the brilliant. You can even use aromatic and culinary herbs in your rock garden, which will give you all the benefits of a regular herb garden.

Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.

Here is more information on Herb Garden Designs. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.