Designing Herb Gardens

Choose which plants you want before designing the garden. Look for herbs that will grow well in your area. Use a site such as Botanical.com to research herbs. Plant herbs such as parsley and chives for a cook's garden or lemon balm and pennyroyal when designing a tea garden. Use lavender and rosemary for a craft garden.

Draw the basic design of the garden out on a sheet of graph paper. Have each square equal one foot of garden space. Decide if you will use raised beds, containers or a combination of methods for your herb garden and indicate these on the paper. Label where each plant will be located.

Find out if any of the herbs that you will be growing, such as mints, are considered invasive, meaning that they will easily take over a garden area. Plan to place these in containers or away from other herbs.

Prepare the area where the herbs will be planted, making sure that the herbs will have access to six or more hours of sunlight per day. Dig the ground to a foot deep and mix 2 inches of compost into it. Place raised beds and containers where desired and fill them with a mix of soil and compost. Level the soil in each of these. Be sure that everything is set where you want before planting.

Change placement of the herbs in your design chart, if you feel things should be planted differently at this point. Place the seeds where you want them on the soil and cover with 1/4 to 1/2 inch of soil, depending on package instructions. Cover the roots of any seedlings completely with soil and pack the soil around them so that they are not set in too loose.