Big is Beautiful: Grow Big Herbs for a Beautiful Garden

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The architectural spikes of yucca provide fine contrast for eucalyptus, dahlia, canna, and tall verbena. Click on the IMAGE GALLERY for more beautiful images. Photo by Rob Proctor

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Most people, especially city folks, seem to be suspicious of any plant that dares to grow higher and wider than a marigold. Trees may be exempt; nevertheless, they are usually grown in isolation surrounded by plenty of short, safe turf.

Large plants—be they trees, shrubs, or large herbaceous perennials—too often are at the mercy of homeowners’ loppers. Why anyone would prefer a naturally graceful, billowing bridal wreath trimmed into the shape of a light bulb remains a mystery to me. Tall and bulky herbs suffer a similar fate.

Many gardeners apparently prefer tiny borders no deeper than 2 or 3 feet. Perhaps they believe that a shallow border will be easier to manage. There’s plenty of room for smaller herbs such as basil, calendula, chives, and thyme, but a big one—perhaps angelica or Joe-Pye weed—will look like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. No wonder it gets hacked backed mercilessly in a vain attempt to make it fit in.

• Chart: Big Plants for a Bold Garden 

Room to Grow

A skimpy 2-foot-wide border just can’t produce the dramatic effect you admire in books and magazines. Large beds, on the other hand, open the door to a whole range of plants that don’t fit into tiny, tidy beds. Big borders are made for big plants. I freely mix perennial ornamentals and herbs in my borders; after all, many of the ornamentals have traditional herbal uses. Tansy, yarrow, costmary, globe thistle, bee balm, bugbane (Cimicifuga racemosa), angelica, Joe-Pye weed, monkshood, and plume poppy (Macleaya cordata) need space to be shown to advantage. Even such annuals as sweet Annie, sunflower, lion’s-ear (Leonotis leonurus), tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis), and castor bean can attain the height of small trees in a short time. Tropical plants such as papyrus, cannas, and bananas are blockbusters, even in temperate gardens.

The key to making a successful big bed is to plan for the ultimate size of its inhabitants. This can be tricky as the information on nursery tags seems intended for gardeners in Pittsburgh or Peoria or Paducah, not my semiarid climate, where the drought and cold winters and clay soil limit the growth of many plants. The best thing to do, wherever you live, is to study how a plant grows at a local botanical garden or in your neighbor’s yard before placing that kind of plant in your own garden.

Underestimating a tree or shrub’s mature size is all too common: we’ve all seen houses eaten alive by their foundation plantings. Leave room for the plants to spread and strut their stuff. Shrub roses, for example, begin as scrawny, pot-grown youngsters. For a while, they look like gangly teenagers, but in five or six years, they come into their full glory. Plant light, airy, shallow-rooted annual herbs such as dill, opium poppy, or sweet Annie around shrub roses. Other suitable companions include short-lived perennials such as peach-leaved bellflower, columbine, ­lunaria, rose campion, and foxglove. As the rose spreads its wings, it will shade out its shorter neighbors, forcing them to reseed farther away from the base. Do the same when situating ­Carolina allspice, witch hazels, pokeweed, sassafras, dogwoods, lilacs, plums, and hydrangeas.

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