When we got the garden done last year I at last got what I have always wanted ; a herb bed.
Being aware of the creaking of the joints we also got it raised up with old railway sleepers (an appropiate place to put a bed methinks.)
By the time it was completed last year we were too late to put in most herbs so I just stuck a pot bound Bay tree in one corner and buried some mint in buckets.(I had been warned about this herb’s propensity to wander and colonise)
I also managed to stick in some of my much loved Sorrel, the only herb which had thrived in our last garden in Kilmacleague.
(Thrived that is until my father-in-law came to stay, we came home from town one day to find it all razed to the ground.
“I got rid of that old dock” he told us triumphantly.)

Despite my burying the mint roots it was rapidly taking over the entire bed this spring so it has now been removed to an area where it can propigate on regardless.

When I finished up with the restaurant my friend Barbara Halley (who had provided me with superb and copious quantities of herbs for the restaurant’s life) had promised me herb plants for my garden any time I wanted.
Last Saturday, as she reckoned the frosts were now passed, we called to her marvellous garden in Tramore and collected a bounty.

The bed of herbs is at last fulfilling its destiny.

I now have, from back left hand corner;
Bronze Fennel, Green Fennel, My precious Sorrel, three Thymes, Chives, some Rosemary and some Lovage in the corner.
On the front row;
Three different sorts of Sage,some flat Parsley and some Curley(there were some more little parsley plants next but the slugs-the scum- have eaten them)some Lavender, and some French Tarragon in the corner, the Bay Tree just behind that,having remained dormant in a pot on our roof in Mary Street for about fifteen years, is this year showing new growth.

Thank you Barbara.