Every year I scour the catalogs and websites of my favorite nurseries looking for something new to experiment with for a season.Sometimes it is an herb that dopes not grow well in Illinois and I need to prove that to myself.Other times it is one I have heard about but never grown.Sometimes it is a cultivar of a plant I love so I want to see what someone else has crafted into a new plant.When the Herb Companion magazine came up with a list of five plants to try in 2010, it got me thinking of my own list of plants to recommend.So here are 5 plants to try out in your garden this year.In the next 5 days I will give information of growing cultivating, harvesting, and using these same five plants.
Mexican oregano(Lippia graveolens) -While not actually a member of the oregano family it still possesses the requisite essential oils that provide oregano's heady, easily recognizable fragrance and piquant flavor. Mexican oregano has a sweetness and intensity that many gourmets prefer to the flavor of the true European or Mediterranean...
My favorite culinary herbs -- Greek oregano, thyme, dwarf lavender, winter savory, common sage, tarragon, and exotic mints -- have as many uses in the garden as they have in the kitchen. These are mounding plants that have gree or gray-green foliage and grow between 6 inches and 2 feet tall. All of them fit nicely among annual flowers, perennials, vegetables and even evergreens.
Here are some attractive mates to these and other herbs:
Annuals: alyssum, dwarf nasturtiums, calendulas, zinnias, and marigolds.
Perennials: coreopsis, purple coneflowers, and all sorts of dianthus, geraniums, and yarrow.
Vegetables: peppers, eggplants, and bulbing fennel.
Evergreens: low shrubs, such as germander, and dwarf forms of boxwood, myrtle, and barberry.
Maybe you don't want an entire herb garden but the flavor and look of herbs appeals to you.... Then here are some tips you can use for incorporating herbs into a floral landscape.
.
Mounding Habit
Herbs with small green-to-gray-green leaves and a mounding habit-namely, Greek oregano, sweet marjoram, French thyme, creeping winter savory, common sage, tarragon, and spearmint-work well as background plants that complement brighter colored flowers.
.
Color and Texture plants
sfdgsfdg
Herbs with unusual colors and forms-such as common chives, with its tubular, grasslike foliage and lavender flowers, and Chinese chives, which has straplike leaves and white flowers-make showy accent plants. I'm especially partial to one of their relatives: society garlic, which has straplike leaves and bears tall spikes of lavender flowers from May through October. This plant is bulletproof in my Los Altos, California, garden (USDA Zone 9), and its flowers taste great in salads. I also gravitate toward the ornamental sages 'Icterina,' 'Tricolor,' and 'Purpurascens', which make lovely stand-alone plants .
Not all perennial herbs are good in containers.Some grow too large or too vigorously for the confining space.Others do well in a pot or window box.
When choosing perennials for the container, try dwarf varieties or hybrids which generally have all the flavor and scent of the original cultivar, but often have a more decorative leaf and generally a smaller growing habit.
Here are a few of my most favorite:
Tricolor Sage -- a smaller version of sage with a variegated leaf of gold and green with a red stem that has smaller leaves and a less woody stem.Nice in a large window box or as a focal point in a round pot.If you are planting it in a container 12 to 18 inches in diameter, you must plant it alone as it will have a large root system that will choke out other plants if the pot is too small.They are shorter, growing only 8 to 10 inches the first year.
Prostrate Rosemary – Usually the genus name is Rosmariius Irene, long arms with flexible stems and a habit that causes it to fall over...
