Herb plants for rockery garden
Shop our selection of the best herb plants for the rock garden, perfect for bringing an element of the kitchen garden into your rockery space. Herbs in the rockery can be used as a means to attract wildlife or simply as a site to harvest some delicious flavourings for your next culinary dish. Rockeries are generally created on poor, rocky, stony or sandy soils in full soil, which is ideal for herbs. Herbs are, of course, an essential ingredient in a wide range of foods, so growing your own means a fresh supply of aromatic flavourings is never more than a few steps away. When natural growing methods are used, growing your own herbs can be a culinary delight, which we guarantee to taste better than anything you’ll find in the shops. Even if you don't intend to use them in the kitchen, many herbs give off a beautiful aroma and, if you leave some of them to flower, will provide a rich source of nectar to attract bees and butterflies into the garden, particularly on warm summer days.
The most popular herbs for the rockery, which we include in this section, are thyme and lavender – although that’s not to say you cannot shop our full range of herbs and choose something else if you prefer. Thyme is a versatile, evergreen perennial herb with distinctive, aromatic foliage in a range of colours and long-lasting, white, pink or lilac-coloured flowers in the summer. It can be harvested all-year round, although the best time to pick is in early summer, when the plants are most productive, before flowering. Lavender has been a favourite of English gardens for centuries, prized for its rich, fragrant flowers and aromatic foliage. The distinctive purple, pink or white flowers are produced on long stalks above a compact mass of grey-green leaves between July and September. Their strong, sweet scent is used to make pot-pourri and they can be cut in bunches and hung on doors or walls to bring the beautiful fragrance into other parts of your home.