Growing Guides

Mint (Mentha) is about the easiest herb a beginner can start, and learning how to grow mint from seed sets you up with a fragrant, hardy perennial for tea, cooking, and the bee garden. It sprouts fast, comes back bigger...

Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea), better known as purple coneflower, is one of the most dependable perennials you can grow from seed, and once it settles in it comes back on its own for years. Expect big, rosy-purple daisies that bees and...

Anise (Pimpinella anisum) is the true source of that warm, sweet licorice flavor bakers love, and it is easier to grow from seed than most people expect. This lacy little annual gives you fragrant seed for biscotti, breads, and after-dinner...

Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) is a beginner-friendly herb that hands you cheerful little daisy-like flowers all summer for a soothing homemade tea. It is easygoing, drought-tolerant, happy in a bed or a pot, and it reseeds itself year after year. The...

Borage (Borago officinalis) is one of the most rewarding herbs you can grow from seed: sow it once and its brilliant blue, star-shaped flowers keep coming all summer, then it drops seed and comes back on its own the next...

If you have only ever met dandelion as a lawn weed, the garden version is a happy surprise. This guide is about growing the Italian dandelion, or dandelion chicory (Cichorium intybus), a cool-season leafy green with the same deeply toothed,...

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is a hardy perennial with soft, lemon-scented leaves and a long, gentle place in the tea garden. It is easy to grow and quick to become a favorite, though the seeds ask for a little patience...

Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) is a hardy North American native perennial with a cool, spearmint-like scent and frosty, silver-white summer blooms. Few plants pull in as many bees, wasps, and butterflies, yet it stays in a tidy clump instead of...

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is a fragrant, evergreen Mediterranean shrub that flavors roasts, breads, and potatoes and stays handsome year-round. Be warned that it is slow and uneven from seed, so this is a project for patient gardeners, not a quick...

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is a low, hardy perennial that carpets an herb bed in fragrant, tiny leaves and returns year after year, flavoring soups, roasts, and slow braises. Its seed is nearly as fine as dust, so sowing it takes...