On Themes,Schemes, and Garden Dreams

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In a 10-foot-square plot were his “farm herbs”: catnip, cowslip, henbit, dogbane, hens-and-chicks, cockscomb, foxglove, and other plants named after farm animals, along with sunflowers and trumpet vine “to help the animals wake up every day.”

I RECALL A STORY about a family in Holland who specialized in growing only yellow tulips. The son, after returning home from college, could not bear the acres and acres of nothing but yellow tulips and secretly planted a few red ones to foil the sameness.

That’s how I sometimes feel about themed herb gardens. I’m sure that a vast garden of all silver herbs can be spectacular, but I would have the urge to sneak in just one red-leaved basil, or possibly a golden yellow yarrow, for a bit of contrast.

Simple theme gardens can help some beginners discover that they can grow herbs. The ladder garden, years back, made it less intimidating to plan an herb bed. All a person had to do was lay down an old ladder on prepared soil and plant each area marked off by the rungs with a different herb. An old wooden wheel could be used in the same way.

Useful as this strategy is, I must admit that whenever I see one of these beds, I feel like removing the ladder or the wheel to free the plants from their enclosures.

Sometimes theme gardens intrigue me, though. A Farmer’s Garden, planned and planted by the fourteen-year-old son of friends in Iowa, tickled me. In a 10-foot-square plot were his “farm herbs”: catnip, cowslip, henbit, dogbane, hens-and-chicks, cockscomb, foxglove, and other plants named after farm animals, along with sunflowers and trumpet vine “to help the animals wake up every day.”

His ten-year-old sister had planned and planted her own theme garden around the names of girls. She called it her Friendship Garden and included rose, holly, melissa (lemon balm), bouncing Bet, busy Lizzies (impatiens), black-eyed Susans, hyacinths, lilies, poppies, heather, bells of Ireland, rosemary, violets, and more that I can’t remember. In the center of her 10-foot-square space, she had placed a child-size table and two chairs for entertaining her friends in the garden. The garden was a delight, even for adults, especially with a tour by the designer herself.