We all find ourselves busy and worn out because our lives are packed with so many tasks. Quite often we forget to go to the grocery store after a long day of work to get herbs for a meal. I find myself getting home after work and realising that I didn't get basil for the pasta dish we planned to cook. That's when I decided to grow my own herb garden in the back yard.
My garden was already decorated and complete with a braai area. I have flagstone walkways with grass alongside them, along the walls of my fence I have rose bushes, and the braai area is paved with cladding. So I had decided to allocate a small section of about half a metre by two metres nearest to my kitchen's back door. This section runs along the wall of my house. It doesn't get too much direct sunlight during the day, because I didn't want the herbs to be exposed to direct sunlight all day long. I placed one layer of bricks to partition this area. Then I added copings along the edge of the bricks to give it a rounded and neat appearance. I went to the garden centre to get soil that is ideal for planting herbs, and I bought a few seeds. In our home we use herbs such as basil, rosemary, coriander, garlic, parsley and thyme. I planted each herb's seeds in a rectangular space within the herb garden. In other words, each set of seeds were planted in a half metre by 1/3 of a metre area. I simply placed a piece of string to indicate each sub-section. Then I placed a note on a skewer stick and wrote the name of each herb I planted in each sub-section. Over the next few weeks the herb plants started to sprout and with great care and watering them daily, they grew into fully fledged herb plants.
If you are not an avid gardener, you could get a number of medium plant pots for the herbs and plant each herb in one plant pot. This will give a more decorative set up. You can place paving stones, such as flagstones, to half of your backyard and place five or six identical plant pots along the backyard wall. For added decoration, you can add cladding to the backyard wall to create a feature area for your herb garden.
The type of herbs that you can grow in your garden will depend on which ones you use in your meals often. Also consider the temperature fluctuations of the area that you live in. Overall, you can be quite creative with gardening while enjoying the fresh herbs in your meals every day.