Every garden should save space to grow herbs for adding delicious flavour to cooking. Follow Monty’s expert advice and you could be enjoying tasty year-round pickings
One of the very British aspects of edible gardening is that we put the majority of focus on growing veg. In most gardens and every allotment plot across the land, veg is proudly – and usually superbly – grown. Yet, I bet that more people grow herbs than vegetables. Those that cook regularly will always have some fresh herbs growing, even if it is only a pot of straggly parsley or basil on a kitchen windowsill. And a lot of gardens have a few herbs almost by default – a woody old rosemary bush, some sprawling lavender, or some sage and chives bravely coping in an unlikely corner.
The truth is that herbs do not need the ritualistic attentions that most vegetables demand. Many are happiest left to their own devices in soil and circumstances that the humblest vegetable would disdain.
But herb gardening – and herb gardens – have a long and central role in the long story of British gardens. The Saxons had a wide and detailed knowledge of herbs for both culinary and medical use (and, rather like the Chinese, would not have differentiated those two roles as we tend to do today). Medieval gardens were based around herbs, again as much for medical purposes as for flavouring food, and it is significant that right up to the 18th century many of the vegetables that we now think of being quite distinct from herbs would have been grouped together in a well-stocked herb garden.
Perhaps the greatest surviving remnant of the importance of the herb garden in Britain is the Chelsea Physic Garden, which was started (just like the world’s first botanic gardens in 16th century Italy) as a way of giving physicians insight into how their medicinal plants grew and interrelated. So, three cheers for herb gardens – it is definitely time we restored the right space and attention due to them.
I feel that we British take herbs for granted, growing a bit of mint, some rosemary, perhaps a sage bush, lavender and thyme, maybe a bay tree for its clipped, decorative effect. Nothing uncommon in this, but we grow by the by, without the enthusiasm we show for vegetables.
Herbs are vital. A small selection of fresh herbs is essential for any kind of cooking and that small selection can be grown in almost any situation, from a window box or pots at the back door to a full-throated, booted and suited herb garden.
Most herbs are uncomfortabl
