Raise your hand if you have done this at a garden center: Strolled over to the herb section (after eyeing half a dozen flowers and a new variety of tomato that you want) and randomly picked up herbs because they looked good, or because they seemed “like a good plant to have in an herb garden.” I know my hand is up.
Unfortunately this is not a very good way to select herbs you’ll actually use in your cooking. A better way is to work backwards from the type of food you like to eat/cook and select the herbs needed in those types of dishes.
With that in mind, I thought I’d break out herbs by cuisine and create a handy cheat sheet for you guys…
Italian
No Italian herb garden would be complete without basil, rosemary, oregano, garlic, and parsley. All are easy to grow in pots. To make things interesting, look for purple or scented varieties of basil. There are also all sorts of kinds of garlic that are prettier and more flavorful than what you can get in the store.
Additional Possibilities: fennel, sage, bay, marjoram and thyme.
French
If you like to cook French style cuisine, then you no doubt have heard of the herbs that go into a “bouquet garni.” That is a little bundle that has thyme, tarragon, bay leaves, and parsley. The herb bundle can be dropped in to a pot to delicately flavor a sauce or soup, and then be retrieved after the herbs have imparted their flavors.
Additional Possibilities: chives, chervil, basil, lavender flowers, fennel, rosemary, savory, and marjoram.
Indian
Herbs used in Indian dishes might be harder to come by, and the various regions have quite diverse styles of cooking, so you might need to narrow it down a bit. But I have been seeing curry plants consistently available at my local nursery. And you can get cumin plants from Seeds of Change (who knew that cumin was the same plant as the ornamental flower “Nigella?!”). The other two herbs I mentioned above are mint (used in yogurt raitas) and cilantro/coriander. Cilantro is what the herb is called in leaf form. When you harvest the seeds, for some reason the name changes to coriander.
p.s. I know that I misspelled coriander in the image, but it’s 2am and I am too tired to change it. Please forgive me if spelling typos really irk you.
Asian
I hate to admit this, but it’s kind of culturally clueless to lump all of Asia into one cuisine. But hey, everyone else is doing it, so I might as well, with one gigantic caveat: any general list of “asian herbs” is pretty much useless. 
That being said, there are some things that are common in various types of Asian cuisine that are easy to grow. Garlic chives for instance, you couldn’t kill ‘em with a nuclear bomb. Well, maybe. But I forget to water mine, harvest them too often, etc and they still keep on coming back for more. Mizuna is a mustard green that you can use in salads or stir frys and is very easy to grow from seed. Oh, and ginger root is pretty versatile, you’ll use it in lots of dishes. According to this website, you can buy some at the supermarket and cut it into pieces the way you would a seed potato, and grow tons of new ginger roots (actually rhizomes).
Additional Possibilities: Thai basil (holy basil), lemongrass, shiso, and chilis.
* * * * *
It is now 2:30 in the morning my friends, and I realized that I totally forgot one of my favorite cuisines: Mexican! I know you super smarty pants readers will help me out and suggest herbs for Mexican cuisine in the comments. Cilantro, cumin, epazote…
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This is a great post, Fern! Very useful (and beautiful, I might add — love the way you did the photos!)
Great ideas for cuisine-based gardening.
A couple of things: Bay leaves are from a tree, which might make growing on my balcony difficult. Are there dwarf varieties? Also, the curry plants that you see at the nursery have nothing to do with Indian curry. This is a spice mix that usually includes coriander, turmeric, ginger, cumin and other spices.
SAzcuy, although my Bay tree is now in the ground, it is only about 4 feet tall and I kept it in the nursery container (10 gal) for several years while I lived in an apartment.
SAzcuy–Whenever I’ve seen Bay trees in a nursery, they are always sold as patio-type “trees” meant to be grown in a decorative pot. They’re usually about 4-5 tall. For example, here is a bay tree that was about 4 feet tall and was underplanted with succulents. Totally do-able on a balcony. Regarding curry mixes, I didn’t know that, thanks for the info. The plant sure smells like Indian curry!
If you plant an Italian cooking herb garden, expect your patio/balcony/kitchen to smell like your always cooking a pot of spaghetti sauce!
Andrea–I grow all the herbs I mentioned in the Italian culinary herbs section, and my balcony doesn’t smell like a pot of spaghetti sauce. I’m bummed! I think that would be a pretty yummy thing for a balcony to smell of!
Fern, I love the look of the underplanted bay tree! I’m really glad you linked to that. I’ve had a bay tree for over ten years. I started with seven-inch seedling, which will absolutely fit any space. They grow very slowly in containers. Mine has always been potted, since I live in the Northeast US where an outdoor bay would freeze to death in winter. I’ve been wanting to add a living groundcover, but didn’t know if the tree was the sort that shared well with others. I keep eyeing Corsican mint, which stays low, but I think the mint likes damper soil. Now I have to get me some succulent succulents like that photo.
Nice!
I’m all about the themed gardens.
Edie–I took that photo at Roger’s Gardens, which is a premium nursery in Orange County, CA. Their container designers are AWESOME! If you look at some of the other photos I took there, you’ll be able to see how they underplanted a little more clearly.
this is a very good post fern becouse in the market you find all the same plants everywere i look at the zone pages to findout what is right for my climet
Love the way you presented herbs by culture.
Edie & Fern- Thanks for the info on the Bay tree, that is beautiful! I wasn’t sure if it was doable, I’m tempted to try this myself.
I didn’t know Mizuna was an herb. I’ve been using it as a vegetable. It’s delicious in mixed stir-frys. It has the added advantage that it looks like an ornamental plant, which is handy since I’m growing it in front of my apartment. It seems like it grows back overnight even when I have done some really heavy harvesting, but that could also be due to the VERY weak solution of fish emulsion I water it with.
Sara in the South San Francisco Bay area.
Sara–I’m not really sure where the line between herb and vegetable is for some greens. Are some of the lettuce leaf basils not herbs when they’re used whole in a salad mix? We have an inclusive definition here at LOTB.
The gray/green curry plant is Helichrysum italicum. I’m not sure, but I don’t think the leaves are edible. The flowers are the source of a beautifully sweet-scented essential oil.
There is, though, another curry plant – Murraya koenigii – which is used in Indian cooking. When you see curry leaves in a recipe, that’s the plant they mean.
Actually, the spice called cumin that’s commonly used in cooking is from the family Apiaceae, genus Cuminum. It’s unrelated to Nigella sativa or so-called “black cumin”.
Noe–Damn. I’m striking out all over this post! That’s what I get for writing it at 2am, I guess. At least black cumin can be used as a spice…just not the one I was hoping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_sativa
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