Well, if I had more self control it would be a formal knot garden, with greys and greens woven in an intricate design - but I'm not. One of the reasons I wanted this garden was so I could showcase larger, specimen type herbal plants.
You can't see them yet, but there are four roses, one in each quadrant (they're very small, own root roses, three from
Heirloom Garden Roses, and one I took a cutting of from our herb garden up at Elm Bank. All of these roses are fragrant, some only bloom once, that's fine with me - if a rose has no scent it won't be in my garden. I call those four-door roses, and you have to be an old classic car person to understand why I say that!
I want to ring the whole outside with germander to add to the 'formality', I'm not totally certain what else I'm going to put in there.
Between the boxwoods I put a little ferny artemesia,
Artemesia pontica, also known as Roman Wormwood. It's going to take a bit of pruning but the feathery grey contrast should look nice between them.
In the foremost left hand quadrant I've got this gorgeous variegated Salad Burnet
Sanguisorba minor in there, along with a nice Lovage plant
Levisticum officinale, a celery flavored herb that's great in potato salad. In the right-hand bed I put a regular Wormwood,
Artemisia absinthium (my mother says no herb garden is complete without one!) and an Angelica,
Angelica archangelica, a nice biennial that smells lovely when you rub past it - heck, most herbs smell lovely when you're working with them, that's why I love them so much!
There are some really nice fragrant salvias I'll add, and lots more, I'm sure, as I go along.