Forget the traditional parterre Herb Garden, if you can’t keep herbs alive! Goths, ghouls, and any gardeners with a sense of humour about their plant-growing failures will enjoy a decorative Herb Graveyard instead.

Penfold Merton, “UK-grown tinkerer” currently working as an Artist in Residence at the Instructables Lab, San Francisco, came up with the fabulous idea for faux tombstones amusing yet useful herb garden approach, as a result of a conversation with Instructables member TangerineBadger.

Turn the unsightly bare earth of your herb garden into a charming old cemetery by planting mini gravestones! … a simple, if slightly morbid, way to make use of the patches of soil that are visible before your herbs have sprouted. It also provides attractive labels for the herbs once they are fully grown.

The one challenge, for most of us DIY crafters with a love for gardening, is that we don’t tend to have a laser thingie machine for etching acrylic — which is called for in the otherwise excellent and detailed instructions for this project. Since there’s no way I’m going to buy a laser cutter to cut the plant names into acrylic, and I don’t know anyone who’s got one tucked away in the corner of their kitchen, I’m brainstorming alternative how-to methods here…

(Hey, just noticed — Penfold Merton’s got an Etsy shop where he lists the acrylic plant-stake tombstones for sale! At ten dollars each, a bargain!)

But let’s suppose you want to DIY, or maybe you (try to) grow different herbs from just the Parsley, Sage, Cilantro, Chives, and Basil for which gravestones are available…

• What about making a plasticine mold, perhaps, to create the little plant-marker tombstone with the same kind of cement you’d use for decorative stepping stones in the garden?
• Or maybe there’s some kind of pourable resin type kit one could find at a craft store?
• Modelling clay might work, if you put on a waterproof glaze of some sort. But would a clay slab have to be quite thick and heavy, in order to be strong enough to stand on end? And what if you don’t have a kiln?
• Penfold suggests Sculpey, which would be much lighter in weight.
• Or if you know a model railroad fan you might beg a supply of Sculptamold or similar modeling compound…

All of these methods could be a lot of fiddley work, though, to make a number of different herb tombstones. Because really, to pull this off, you need the carry the theme through the entire herb garden, with a different shape of marker for each type of plant you want to grow… But for those of us who struggle to keep an herb garden alive, the Herb Graveyard project is really too delicious an idea to let go.

So I’m looking for ideas on this, people — any suggestions for other (easier, less expensive) ways to make these without laser-cutting acrylic?

photo by amberdc.

Want to grow a variety of herbs, but only have a small space for a garden? Stuart Robinson, one of our favourite Aussie gardeners, offers the Herb Spiral as a unique solution!

Basically, an herb spiral garden is an attractive and useful “permaculture” gardening method, a construction that winds its way up from its base, curling in to the centre as it goes up to about three feet in height.

The spiral structure means this herb garden has a small “footprint” in terms of garden space, but lots of room to plant a variety of herbs to please any gourmet cook-gardener. Easy to reach everything for picking and weeding, too.

Build your own herb spiral garden out of whatever materials are affordable and most available to you, whatever will best suit your landscape — Stuart has seen these interesting gardens made from PVC piping, clay tubing, and rocks and stones…
I think I sense a use for my old eavestrough piping, here!

Plant sun-loving herbs at the top of the structure, where the water drains away most efficiently, and those plants that prefer damp soil can go down at the base, where the water ends up! Which side of this semi-vertical garden you use for a certain plant can be determined by how much sun exposure it needs, because parts of the spiral will naturally offer more shelter and shade than others.

Okay, now here’s exactly why it so ticks me off that lavender plants are just barely hardy in my zone 4 (windy) garden — a pretty wreath of lavender blossoms, accented with one tiny perfect rosebud in a bow of raffia.

This is one of the bountiful variety of lavender wreath styles at Hood River Lavender, Oregon — certified organic, too!

If you can make an evergreen wreath, and a grapevine wreath, and a wreath of dried autumn leaves… this would be totally do-able! The trick, of course, is to have an ample supply of lavender to make enough bunches for an entire wreath…

So I offer up this floral inspiration for you lucky crafting gardeners in a milder climate, who can grow beautiful thick lush lavender plants ’til the flowers come out of your ears… or who live within an easy jaunt of Hood River’s lavender U-Pick!

Fresh herbs are still available in the grocery stores in early December, but they get more limited and more expensive as winter comes on.

To save money, and to be able to cook with the same wide variety of savoury flavours that are available to us in the summertime, I’ve been trying to convert my recipes to using dried herbs. Fortunately, this turned out to be quite easy!

Here are my 3 newly-discovered tips:

1. Use only 1/3 the amount of dried herbs, as their flavour is more intense. If the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley, for example, use 1 teaspoon of the dried parsley.
2. Crush the dry leaves slightly before adding to the dish you’re cooking, to help release the essential oils.
3. Add dried herbs to the pot near the beginning of the cooking process, so the flavour can develop in the moist heat. Fresh herbs, of course, generally should be added to a cooked dish as late in the process as possible, so that their more delicate flavour, texture, and colour can be best preserved.

Saturday night with nothing much going on… time for a soothing and skin-softening milk-and-honey bath!

Combine 1/4 cup of honey with 2 cups of warm milk.

Fill the tub with warm water, and pour the milk and honey into the bath while the tub is still filling.

For a special fragrance, you can crumble in a small handful of dried herbs, such as lavendar.

Ahhhh!