Create Your Very Own Windowsill Herb Garden

Buying culinary herbs can work out quite expensive if you use a lot of them to add flavour to your cooking. But you could create your very own windowsill herb garden and have fresh herbs always available for you to pick - what could be nicer than that?

A good way to begin is to get some window boxes or even some attractive individual pots to plant your herbs in. Herbs are not only very useful in the kitchen but are a very attractive addition to any room.

Before dashing off to buy seeds or seedlings, take a moment to think about what type of herbs will be useful to you. Do you use herbs to add to stews and to flavour meat? Do you use herbs to make a relaxing herb tea? Do you use herbs purely for their aroma or do you add a handful to a warm bath? It is no good buying seeds or plants that you will not use.

For the kitchen, some good herbs to plant are chives, parsley, oregano, sage, thyme and perhaps, some coriander. Rosemary or bay are also useful kitchen herbs but they do take a little longer to grow from seed, so consider buying these as young plants and growing them in separate containers.

A nice gift for any aspiring chef to receive is a kitchen herb garden. These are usually sold in kits that include everything that you will need to create your very own windowsill herb garden. But you could just buy some nice pots or window boxes, some good compost and some seeds or seedlings and you are ready to go.

Some herbs to grow if you make herbal teas are bergamot, chamomile, lemon balm and a selection of mints. But always grow plants from the mint family in separate containers because the roots of these plants can easily take over the whole window box making it impossible for the other herbs to grow to their full potential.

Why not grow a large pot or window box full of a few varieties of lavender? It can be used for lots of different things that require an aromatic plant. You could dry some of the flowers and tie them in a piece of muslin then place them in your drawers and wardrobes to leave a gentle fragrance on your clothes. You could add a handful of the flowers to a bath whilst the tap is running to give a nice, relaxing bath, or you could add some of the dried flowers to a potpourri to fragrance your room.

Place your pots or window boxes on a sunny windowsill because most herbs need a lot of sun to flourish. Make sure that your herbs are not allowed to dry out, especially if they are situated on a kitchen windowsill where it can get very hot.

As you can see, it is easy, useful and decorative to create your very own windowsill herb garden so you can pick fresh herbs whenever you need them.