I didn’t have much time a few years ago to put together an outdoor herb garden. I was working long hours at my job and a single mom to two teens. I didn’t have time to build an herb garden, dig up a chunk of the back yard, or fight weeds in the plot. So I took a few…shortcuts.
Instructions for the herb garden
For the world’s easiest herb garden, I bought curved bricks to create a circular garden. This space in my yard could bear only a circle of only about 4 or maybe 5 feet across, but the idea could have suited a smaller or much larger area, depending on how tight I wanted to make the circle or if I wanted a squigglier circle.
I bought enough garden dirt in plastic bags to line the inside of the herb bed. The soil here 5 miles from the beach is different from the farmland back in Georgia where I grew up, so I use garden soil that is rich in nutrients not found in this sandy soil. I split these bags open–once across the top, once across the bottom, and a long split down the middle–and then folded the plastic flaps back and underneath the bags. The bags were packed tightly against each other. This way, the grass and weeds underneath wouldn’t overtake the garden.
Next, I planted some of my favorite herbs, such as rosemary, basil, and mint. These were small plants so the opened bags of dirt were deep enough to accommodate their roots.
Then I shoved in more garden dirt on top of the plastic bags, covering the bags but careful not to bury the herbs.
Last, I arranged bricks in a Stonehenge pattern for my herb garden, and voila!
The photo of the herb garden above is the first planting of the third year of this particular garden.
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