Herb Garden

Once the patio was built by professionals, our real work began. We took on two fairly large projects to help turn our patio into what we wanted. The first was building a raised herb garden on one side. We used lots of bricks we'd saved from our old patio and started stacking. D resisted using adhesive except at some of the corners, just in case we decided we didn't like the outcome. But the weight of the soil on both sides and the patio itself seem to be holding it in place for now. Because our yard has a slope, we built the bed up 5 bricks high on the low side and X on the highest side. We decided that higher than that would definitely require gluing the bricks in place.

We hauled in a lot of compost to help build up the sides and also to fill the garden and swapped out bricks that had too much visible mortar on the exposed sides, to make the whole thing look neat.

We planted a bunch of herbs, moved the big pots nearby, and called it a day (weekend, multiple weekend).

Stuff started popping up pretty quickly, but I'd gotten a late start on planting when I realized that many of the herbs said to start indoors in February, so I also cheated and bought some baby plants.

We moved a very sad looking, leggy rosemary from the front yard and bought thyme, sage, oregano, lavender, and dill plants, plus an additionally happy looking rosemary. We planted cilantro and borage (it sounded cool and has pretty blue flowers) directly from seeds. We planted kale in the pots and had various mint varieties growing in two other pots already. We have basil (Thai and Italian) also, but that's been planted among the tomatoes in our vegetable garden.

My awesome friend made me these beautiful markers that go with the blue furniture we seem to be acquiring (more on that later).

Here's the whole scene, freshly watered, back in April when we finished it.

Fast forward a month and everything still looks healthy and green (except the kale - that never seems to grow well for us). We rearranged our flower pots to tuck our giant shade umbrella in the middle, but otherwise have been very happy with how this garden has turned out. We find ourselves going outside regularly to pick herbs as needed.

Next year, I will add parsley to the mix as well. I didn't think we used it very often but we've needed it a few times this spring. Anything other herbs I should plant?