Our Herb Garden Creation
To begin our farm, we wanted to create an easy to maintain herb garden. We inherited a white fenced square from the previous owners of the home. When we moved in, the garden enclosure was filled with weeds and poison ivy. It wasn’t inviting and no one wanted to go in. I wish I had a before photo. We didn’t want to destroy the perfectly good fencing, so we worked with what we had. As a result of some tinkering on graph paper and researching raised bed boxes online, we created a traditional herb garden. I envisioned the garden to also be a destination on our property ~ a place to sit still while sipping tea and spirits.
We found a beautiful vintage iron table and chairs from a local antique shop Antiques of Northport, and two iron swings from a salvage shop on the North Fork called Material Objects.
Our landscapers helped with taking out the good plants we could find to transplant someplace else. Then we put down black landscaping fabric to deter weeds from growing, laid down 7 yards of pea gravel, and arranged the boxes within the garden with enough room to walk around and cultivate the herbs. We also had 8 yards of compost mixed with sand delivered to go in the boxes. Herb thrive in well-drained soil, so mixing the compost with half sand should help.
We chose herbs because generally deer stay clear of herbs, and we love to cook with fresh herbs regularly. We are also learning from reading Lisa Steele’s blog “Fresh Eggs Daily” that chickens love herbs. So this is an added bonus and the chickens seem to be delighted when we bring them a handful.
I chose the raised beds from Wayfair.com because I could basically customize the size to fit within our 30×30 garden, and the material coincides nicely with the fencing. The raised beds were delivered and came with all the materials and directions needed. Each bed took about an hour to build. A potting table is useful at the back end of the garden to hold our little shovels, hand rakes, and sheers to collect the herbs.
The terra-cotta pots are filled with hops (for my husband’s hobby of brewing beer) that will be transplanted elsewhere. The other pots are filled with mint to keep them contained so they do not spread all over the garden. Each bed has lavender. We are planting sage, thyme, cilantro, basil, rosemary, pineapple sage, chives, and parsley. I plan to put succulents and flowers in the smaller pots around the garden. We are looking forward to sunny days ahead.
