Herb gardens that look like old England with their geometric shapes and flowering pots in the center are great, but be prepared to maintain them often by cutting them back when they explode in size.  It’s hard to keep the tight look unless you stay after it. You can cut out the brown chunks and sections that die off with uneven watering or highly varying weather conditions, but they start to look unsightly.

Russian sage in a “Sweep”

Try Provence lavender or Russian sage in one large sweep of plantings. Five to 10 can really be striking. The blue foliage is a great contrast to the different greens of lawns and shrubs. You can plant it and watch it grow into 3 times its size in the first year. The important thing with most herbs is don’t overwater or even water at all because they start to turn dark gray and then die off like they are too dry, but it’s that they are too wet!

Pots of herbs and veggies outside your kitchen door

If you want a variety of herbs that you actually will use in your cooking,  why not just plant the ones you really will use in a pot close to the kitchen in strong sun? We are so proud of our basil, parsley, and cilantro.  We are even trying mint in its own pot for when we have company and want to serve a Mohito cocktail!  (I never thought I’d want to grow mint!) For veggies we have grown lettuce, spinach, cherry tomatoes, and patio tomatoes.  Our neighbors have the ½ acre garden with asparagus, squash, zucchini, corn and beans.  I love the donations they give us throughout the summer, but for me to maintain all that is just too much. I’d rather buy the few things I need at the Whole foods. With the little bit here and there, success is so much easier,  You and your family can feel like you really have succeeded without a lot of effort.

Oh, and one more thing…be sure you remember to pick the plants you grow!

In this world of going green, composting always comes up as an important contribution for us homeowners.   For Christmas my highly aware “green” teenage kids gave my husband and me a small composter electrically run.  My son saw it on the Discovery Channel. It was back ordered by a month because the small company was flooded with orders.  We waited anxiously.

We removed some low lying shelving in our kitchen and proudly installed it near our sink.  It was a clean little unit made of recyclable products.  We plugged it in, and started tossing in our banana peels and salad leftovers.  The honey moon was soon over because of the high humming noise it made and the heat and smells it gave off.  I asked the kids to move it to the nearby kitty cat room/tool room off the kitchen. There we put it to full use.

Am I proud to be recycling?  Oh yes. Is it gross-oh yes…especially since my kids and husband invariably leave it to me  to actually scrape the compost into the machine. Beet juice, 2 week old pea salad, French fries with catsup, take out Chinese, avocado peels, coffee grounds and egg shells…Yum.  Even the cats clear out when I enter the room with my wooden spoon and compost bin.  It was when maggots developed inside the machine because I had over filled the bin and not closed the top properly –that I figured there had to be a better way of fulfilling my “green” responsibilities.

My suggestion is this.  Use the green and the brown method. Mix your leaf clippings (green ) with your leaves (brown)  and some topsoil or old potting soil and  turn them every time you add something about once a week.  Every few months put it around a needy plant or bed.  It’s nice to romanticize the whole process but the reality stinks and can be really gross.