Designing with Herbs

But herbs can also serve as beautiful landscape plants. By combining them in ways that highlight their ornamental value, you can create a dramatic (not to mention tasty and useful) landscape.

Rule 1: Evaluate herbs for their individual characteristics.

Rule 2: Create effective combinations.

As you combine these different plants, pay attention to how their foliage and flower colors go together. Try not to combine more than three distinct colors together. It's okay, though, to combine numerous shades and hues of one color together since they are harmonious.

Rule 3: Use color to bring the landscape together.

Think about whether you want to use "cool" colors (blue, green, purple, violet and turquoise) or "warm" colors (red, scarlet, orange, gold and yellow). Cool colors have a serene and calming effect. They typically recede into the landscape and make an area feel larger. Warm colors are dramatic and stir excitement. They jump towards you and bring the landscape closer, making it feel smaller. To create a feeling of length, use warm colors in the front of the landscape and cool colors towards the back.

Keep in mind that harmonious colors (various hues and shades of the same color) are soothing, while contrasting colors (opposites on a color wheel) are exciting. Which colors work well with one another can be a matter of personal preference. A trick of the trade is to visit a greenhouse or nursery and pick flowers and foliage of plants you are considering and mix and match their colors to ensure you select plants and cultivars which will give you the impact you are seeking.

Rule 4: Create tiers.

Rule 5: Arrange plants in drifts.

Create your drifts using Rule 2, where you drift from a plant with a pronounced characteristic to one with a different characteristic, then to another one with a different characteristic, ensuring that each has a contrasting growth habit or form. For visual harmony and to avoid monotony, you want to combine the different plant forms together and not have plants with the same forms or growth habit grouped together.

Rule 6: Consider year-round interest.

To create an herb garden that is interesting all year, combine plants that will peak in their performance at different times. Herbs with colorful foliage such as sage and those that flower during the entire growing season such as calendula can carry your landscape from spring through frost. Winter is the season with the least number of herbs available for providing landscape interest, but rosemary 'Arp', winter savory, germander, parsley, thyme and sage are all great herbs for winter show. Their foliage is evergreen and fragrant, keeping things interesting during this cold, dark season. Fall is another time when it is nice to enliven the landscape. Pineapple sage, Mexican bush sage, Mexican tarragon, goldenrod, Joe-pye weed and tansy are all good fall bloomers.

Rule 7: Add fragrance to the landscape.

Strategic placement of aromatic herbs adds the dimension of fragrance to your garden. Consider placing fragrant herbs near walks, paths, patios, porches and decks where they can easily be brushed or touched to release their scents.

The next time you want a plant with a certain texture or color for your garden design, reach for an herb. Whether using herbs in containers or in grand sweeping beds of drifts and tiers, follow these seven rules and you are guaranteed a dramatic and highly effective herb garden.

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Photographs by Susan Hamilton.

Susan L. Hamilton is an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and director of the UT Gardens at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.