ORNAMENTAL HERBS

The 1st week of May is National Herb Week. We commonly think of herbs for culinary use, but many herbs can be used in other ways throughout the garden. 

 

These perennial herbs can be planted together in the garden, added to specific herbscapes or mixed in with your landscape in beds, borders or anywhere you want some interesting color, texture or fragrance:

ANISE HYSSOP (Agastache rugosa) – attractive purple flower spikes, attracts butterflies and honey bees, strongly anise-scented

BEEBALM (Monarda didyma) - unusual red spidery edible flowers, attracts hummingbirds, citrusy mint scent

CATMINT (Nepeta mussinii) - purple flowers, silver mounding mint-scented foliage great for borders/edging

CHIVES (Alliums spp) – purple or white edible flowers in spring or fall and grassy onion or garlic scented foliage

BRONZE FENNEL (Foeniculum vulgare nigra) - feathery bronze foliage, attractive to butterflies and licorice scented

GERMANDER (Teucrium chamaedrys) – Semi-evergreen foliage known as poor man’s boxwood for miniature hedges

LADY’S MANTLE (Alchemilla vulgaris) – Frothy green flowers, semi-evergreen rounded foliage which forms a carpet and catches the dew or rain

LAMB’S EAR (Stachys byzantina) - tall, purple-flowered spikes which attract bees and butterflies, silver wooly soft leaves

LAVENDER (Lavandula) – classic fragrant purple/pink flowers, low silver foliage for edging walks or rock gardens, attracts butterflies

MEADOWSWEET (Filipendula ulmaria) - feathery white almond-scented plumes in summer/fall for long lasting cut flowers, wintergreen scented leaves

MOUNTAIN MINT (Pycanthemum virginianum) – small white flowers on mint scented shrub-like foliage, excellent bee plant

OREGANO & MARJORAM (Origanum spp) - Purple/Blue everlasting flowers on ornamental varieties

RUE (Ruta graveolens) - lacy blue/green foliage, yellow waxy blooms which produce attractive seed heads, rose companion

RUSSIAN SAGE (Perovskia abrotenoides) – silvery shrub-like foliage, pale blue flower spikes

SAGE (Salvia officinalis) - grey-green pebbly leaves or variegated foliage, pale blue flowers

SOAPWORT (Saponaria ocymoides) - delicate pink profusion of blossoms, low growing mounds

THYME (Thymus spp) – fragrant low growing foliage for cracks and crevices

ST. JOHN’S WORT (Hypericum perforatum) - balsam-scented foliage, yellow flowers turn red when pinched

YARROW (Achillea spp) – a variety of colored button everlasting flowers, silvery or green ferny foliage

“And God said, See I have given you every herb

that yields seed which is on the face of the earth. . . “

Genesis 1:29