Let’s hear it for HERBS

“Herbs are relevant to every meal for every kind of eater. They are intrinsic and essential”

Vegetable gardening andmowing the lawn cover the entire repertoire of many people who would consider themselves keen gardeners. Growing your own is a phrase redolent with goodness and virtue, allotments abound and every form of horticultural medium, including Gardeners’ World and this magazine, inevitably features a sizeable proportion on growing vegetables. I must declare an interest here. I have two veg plots at Longmeadow, grew up growing vegetables and could not conceive of gardening without doing so. But I think growing vegetables deserves less attention than growing herbs.

There are three reasons for this. The first is that a herb garden can be, and usually is, a beautiful place. No reason why a vegetable plot cannot be all of this too, but more often utility trumps beauty. We admire the beauty of perfectly grown