20 Herb Garden Design Ideas

Want to spice up mealtime with the fresh flavors of homegrown herbs? Discover great ideas you can use to inspire your own herb garden design.

May 14, 2021

By: Julie Martens Forney

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Grow Herbs Almost Anywhere in Almost Anything

Herbs are some of the easiest things to grow and they don’t require a lot of space. Even if you don’t have a yard, you can plant an herb garden in a container, on a windowsill or even on a wall.

Upcycled Herb Garden

The easiest way to create an herb garden design is to slip individual pots of herbs into one larger container, like this vintage wine crate that says “wine brings joy.” Add a few favorite herbs, including (clockwise from bottom corner) basil, thyme, rosemary, sweet woodruff and bay, and you’ll find that herbs bring joy, too. Growing herbs in individual pots lets you change your herb garden design at will, depending on which flavors are headlining in your kitchen creations.

Find More Ideas: 30 Whimsical Container Gardens Made on the Cheap

A Pot of Picnic Herbs

Fill a container with herbs that pull double duty at picnics — seasoning dishes while serving as the perfect picnic table centerpiece. This herb collection is sold at garden centers as “NewTwist Herb-A-Licious” — you can ask for it by name. The components include ‘Kasar’ basil, gold-edged sage, ‘Gorizia’ rosemary (with leaves twice the size of other varieties) and orange thyme. This herb blend provides the perfect accompaniment to grilled Italian sausages, fresh homegrown tomato slices and a rosemary-garnished gin and tonic.

Raised Bed Herbs

Fill a raised bed with herbs to craft a living work of art that looks as good as it tastes. This raised bed garden features a blend of culinary favorites: thymes (flowering), oregano (front, center), spiky chives, silvery sage, curly parsley and rosemary. By snipping and drying leaves and stems from this garden throughout the growing season, you can easily stash enough herbs to season a winter’s worth of savory dishes. Choose which herbs to plant-based on flavor profiles your family likes best.

Get the How-To: 9 DIY Raised Bed Garden Ideas

Make Room for Lavender

Fill your patio with the lush scent of lavender fields by tucking these fragrant favorites into containers. Dress up plain pots of lavender by plunking them into a crate or embossed tin cache pots. Grow a window box of lavender, and you’ll have enough flowers to harvest for making potpourri, soap or lavender wands. These English lavender varieties are Blue Spear and Avignon Early Blue, which flowers earlier than other English lavenders.

Try a Pocket Planter

A strawberry jar offers a traditional way to tend a portable herb garden that provides plenty of leaves for spicing up your menus. Choose a terra-cotta planter to give Mediterranean herbs like sage, oregano and thyme the sharp drainage they crave. This pot also hosts chives and cilantro. Prior to planting a strawberry jar, insert a length of narrow PVC pipe that’s capped on one end and drilled with holes along the length. When watering, fill the pipe with water and it will percolate into the soil in each pocket.

Asian Flavors in the Garden

Interplant herbs in your garden beds to keep fresh flavors close at hand and easy to harvest. This bountiful and beautiful herb pairing features lemongrass and Thai basil, two key ingredients in many Southeast Asian dishes, including curries, stir fries and soups. Both of these herbs are annuals in all but the warmest regions, so plan to dry or freeze leaves and stems for winter use.

Learn More: Planting, Growing and Harvesting Basil

Fire Up the Grill

Need a secret ingredient for your next barbecue? Try adding fresh herbs to your rub, marinade or coals. This breeder-selected plant mix features herbs hand-picked for flavors that kick grilling skills up a notch. Plants include (clockwise from left) golden garden sage, ‘Barbecue’ rosemary, French tarragon, Italian oregano and English thyme. All of these herbs add fresh zest to summer salads and sides or can be easily air-dried to preserve for future use.

Learn More: How to Preserve Your Garden Herbs

Metal Works

Transform a metal container into a masterpiece by adding a few herbs. Make sure any container you use for herbs has holes for drainage, because many herbs, especially Mediterranean ones like rosemary and thyme, grow best in soil that drains well and isn’t soggy. In a metal container, soil warms easily from the sun, resulting in a bumper crop of flavorful leaves for cooking and preserving. Want to dress up your herb container gardens? Try making your own plant labels.

Upside Down Herbs

Transform an old metal coffee can with a plastic lid into your own hanging herb garden. This quick DIY project keeps herbs handy for cooking without taking up any counter space. As long as you have a bright window, you can grow your family’s favorite herbs year-round indoors. It’s an easy, inexpensive way to perk up your meals with the flavors of fresh herbs.

Herbs in Bloom

A simple wooden raised bed provides an easy alternative for creating a new herb garden. Fill it with herbs that unfurl eye-catching flowers to add color to your garden design. Good candidates include chives, lavender, chamomile, catmint, dill and spearmint. Many herb blossoms beckon pollinators, including beneficial insects that prey on bad bugs.

Learn More: How to Plant, Grow and Use Chamomile

Build an Herb Spiral

Make the most of your garden space by adding an herb spiral to your yard. This herb garden design can be any size, but is often 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Build it using whatever material suits your location, including stacked stones, bricks or mortared stones. An herb spiral provides different growing conditions — sharp drainage at the top for Mediterranean herbs (thyme, rosemary, oregano, lavender) and moister soil in the middle, ideal for basil, coriander or tarragon. The lowest part of the herb spiral is the moistest, which makes it a great place to plant mint, parsley or chives.

Find More Ideas: 25 Raised Garden Bed Ideas

Pretty as a Picture

Growing herbs in the kitchen keeps them handy for snipping and adding to dishes at the right moment for the most flavor. Create a simple DIY vertical herb garden using a picture frame and shadow box. This small garden boasts plenty of room for a variety of zesty herbs, including rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano and lavender. Another way to grow a fresh crop of kitchen herbs is in mason jars, which suit any kitchen decor. With any kitchen herb garden, remember that these tasty plants need bright sunlight to thrive and develop best flavors.

Find More Ideas: 12 Pretty + Practical Vertical Garden Planters

Vertical Herb Garden Design

If space is tight, shift your herb garden to the walls with a vertical garden. This pocket planter turns unused wall or fence space into a growing area that’s perfect for tending a crop of your favorite herbal flavors. Herbs in this planter include cilantro, parsley, thyme, basil and rosemary.

Find More Ideas: Indoor Gardens That You'll Want in Your Home

Herbs for Sipping

Fill a container with herbs just begging to be minced, muddled or blended into drinks that celebrate summertime flavors. Designed by plant breeders, this combination features all the herbs you could need for upgrading your favorite seasonal sippers. Herbs include (clockwise from bottom center) lemon thyme, Mojito mint, Scarlet pineapple sage, ‘Kasar’ basil and sweet leaf stevia. The planter is sold at garden centers as “Herb-A-Licious Back Patio Sips.”

Find More Ideas: Big-Batch Summer Cocktails That Serve a Crowd

Perfect Patio Herb

Creeping thyme turns any flagstone patio (or path) into a living work of art when it’s left to spread and fill in the cracks between stones. Every step releases a delightful fragrance. Other good herbs for planting underfoot include Corsican mint, red creeping thyme, Elfin thyme or woolly thyme.

Learn More: How to Grow Thyme

Corner Garden

You don’t need to dig up a huge swath of lawn to make room for herbs. These tasty plants can thrive in a small planting area like this corner of lawn bordered with brick walls. This is actually an ideal location because nearby brick surfaces retain heat, which many herbs crave. Rocks scattered around plants also help absorb the sun’s heat and reflect it back to the plants. Herbs in this garden include thyme, oregano, rosemary, lavender, sage and mint.

Classic Herb Garden

Herbs weave a striking textural tapestry in the garden with their different leaf colors and forms. The beauty of these flavorful plants really shines when you arrange herbs in formal rows, like this planting of (front to back) purple sage, thyme, basil and lavender cotton. Pea gravel is the ideal mulch and path material, providing sharp drainage and absorbing sunlight heat to radiate it back to plants.

Window Box Herbs

When selecting pots for your herb garden, don’t overlook antique containers. This vintage water trough for animals makes a perfect herb garden, offering substantial depth for plants to sink their roots. Placed beneath a window, it forms the perfect window box planter. Herbs include tricolor sage, pineapple sage and curry plant (Helichrysum italicum), which is not particularly edible (not used in curries), although the leaves do release that scent. This curry is known more in herbal circles for its medicinal properties (used in tinctures and infusions) and stunning silver leaves. Summer snapdragon (Angelonia) sets off the garden with purple flower spikes.

Find More Ideas: Window Box Edibles

Indoor Herbs

Keep fresh basil and thyme always at hand by filling three pots with soil for containers and arranging them on a bright windowsill. Fresh herbs can thrive year-round indoors as long as you provide direct sunlight and protect them from cold drafts in northern regions. Other herbs that thrive by a sunny window include chives and oregano. When designing a windowsill herb garden, help prevent overwatering by tucking plants into plain pots that you slip into pretty cachepots. Always empty the cachepot each time you water your herbs.

Find More Ideas: 12 Best Indoor Herb Garden Kits

Thyme Table

Herbs are versatile and adaptable. Many types thrive in cracks, crevices and shallow planting pockets like those found in DIY patio furniture crafted from upcycled cinderblocks. This clever sustainable table offers plenty of planting spots for Mediterranean herbs, which love the alkaline conditions these blocks create. Thyme tumbles out the side of the table and also creates a living centerpiece — along with oregano and mint — in a planting box dropped into the tabletop. Loose boards and slate pieces form the tabletop.

Find More Ideas: 16 Ways to Squeeze a Garden Onto Your Deck or Patio

20 Herb Garden Design Ideas

Related To:

Shop This Look

Grow Herbs Almost Anywhere in Almost Anything

Upcycled Herb Garden

A Pot of Picnic Herbs

Raised Bed Herbs

Make Room for Lavender

Try a Pocket Planter

Asian Flavors in the Garden

Fire Up the Grill

Metal Works

Upside Down Herbs

Herbs in Bloom

Build an Herb Spiral

Pretty as a Picture

Vertical Herb Garden Design

Herbs for Sipping

Perfect Patio Herb

Corner Garden

Classic Herb Garden

Window Box Herbs

Indoor Herbs

Thyme Table

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