Perennial herbs are the perfect blend of beauty and practicality. Ideal for a potager or cottage vegetable garden that mixes vegetables, flowers, fruit, and herbs in a harmonious design.
Imagine being in the middle of cooking dinner, and you realize one thing is stopping you from completing the best dish of your life: fresh herbs.
Rather than frantically calling your spouse to pick up emergency basil, chives, or rosemary, you step outside with a pair of scissors and triumphantly return with a handful of fragrant herbs.
Sound like a dream?
All the best edible gardens include herbs. (That’s a fact!)
And no matter what style of garden you have—potager, market, raised bed, formal, cottage, no-till, food forest—you’ll want to include herbs.
What Are Perennial Herbs?
Perennial herbs are plants that come back every year, regrowing from their own roots after dying back in fall or winter.
They don’t need to be replanted (unlike annuals), and most are pretty cold-tolerant. Because of this, they will produce leaves for cooking with for a longer period of time.
In this post, I’m sharing my favorite perennial herbs to grow in a potager kitchen garden.
Why Perennial Herbs Belong in Your Potager Garden
If you’re not already growing perennial herbs in your potager garden, then you’re missing out an a fabulous category of plants.
I love growing perennial herbs because
- They don’t need to be replanted
- Most are low-maintenance and drought-tolerant
- Many are great for pollinators
- They add structure and rhythm to garden design
Unlike annual herbs, which are fantastic too, but require more maintenance, perennial herbs come back every year with fresh and delicious new growth.
Most perennial herbs are low-maintenance, have few pests, and are drought-tolerant when established. This is why I recommend growing them in low-maintenance vegetable gardens.
Perennial herbs produce flowers that are beloved by pollinators. Pollinators are essential to every food-producing garden. Without good pollination, fruits would not develop on our plants, and isn’t that the point of growing an edible garden? To harvest food?
And if you are growing a formal or more ornamental edible garden, like a French potager garden, then perennial herbs can add the structure and rhythm that your garden design requires. I explain more about designing a potager-inspired garden in this post if you’re curious.
Top 10 Perennial Herbs to Grow in Your Garden
Let’s get right to the list. These are my favorite perennial herbs to grow in an edible garden.
- Chives
- Thyme
- Oregano
- Sage
- Mint
- Lavender
- Lemon Balm
- Winter Savory
- Rosemary
- Fennel
- Bonus: Bay Laurel
- Honorable Mention: Parsley
At the end, I’ll share a few ways to use perennial herbs in garden design.
Chives
Chives have grass-like leaves and produce edible flowers in early spring. You can use the flowers in bouquets or to make this delicious, bright pink chive blossom vinegar.
They are hardy in zones 3-9 and will die back in the winter in colder climates. Don’t worry, they will return fresh and new in the spring.
Because chives are so hardy, you can even keep them in a pot in zones 5 and up and they will come back for you each spring.
Garlic chives are similar to chives. It has white flowers and flat leaves, and, like its name suggests, tastes like garlic.
Thyme
Thyme makes a wonderful, fragrant groundcover with its delicate leaves and spreading, ground-hugging growth habit.
There are so many different kinds of thyme to choose from from English to lemon to wooly thyme. They have slightly different scents, appearance, and vigor, so it’s worth looking into if you want your thyme to fulfill a specific purpose in your garden.
Most thymes are hardy between zones 5 and 9, but check the cultivar tag before planting.
Oregano
Fresh oregano smells delicious. My kids like to smell it because it reminds them of pizza.
Oregano performs best in hot, dry locations. It also loves to spread, which makes it easy to propagate by division if you’re needing more of it.
Oregano is very easy to dry and I actually think it tastes stronger dried vs. fresh. Just be sure to harvest before the flower buds open for best flavor.
Hardy to zone 4, but will die back in the winter and regrow in the spring.
Sage
Sage has beautiful silvery green leaves that I love to use in the kitchen and in bouquets.
It can get big and shrubby, forming a woody base, but if you keep it cut back pretty hard, that will control its size and keep stems soft.
Sage flowers in late spring and brings all the pollinators in. Once it’s done flowering, I cut it back, and it continues producing stem after stem of fragrant silvery sage leaves.
Sage is one of my favorite bouquet ingredients and makes simple Mason jar flower arrangements like these pop.
There are many different kinds of sage to grow, but I’m happy with my regular ol’ garden sage that I grew from seed my first year of gardening. We have a special bond.
However, a few other beautiful sage cultivars to look for are:
- Berggarten (large leaves)
- Golden (green and gold variegated leaves)
- Tri-color (white, purple, and green variegated leaves)
- Purpurea (purple leaves)
Mint
Mint is an aggressive spreader and not recommended to be planted in the ground unless you have a way of controlling it’s growth and keeping it contained.
However, I can’t imagine my garden without it because it’s my favorite herb to grow for tea. See all my other favorite easy-to-grow herbs for tea in this post.
We keep our mint in a metal 4×4 raised bed. I cut it pretty heavily throughout the season both to keep it’s aggressive growth in check and also to use in the kitchen. Every spring, I like to thin out some of the clumps and put them in pots that I have sprinkled throughout the garden.
Mint is hardy in zones 3-9, but some cultivars are less hardy, so check the plant tag before buying.
Like sage and thyme, there are a number of different kinds of mint flavors to grow in your garden. Here are my absolute favorites to grow:
- Peppermint (strong peppermint flavor; absolutely delicious and has dark green leaves)
- Chocolate mint (hints of chocolate mixed with mint)
- Apple mint (large slightly fuzzy green leaves with great flavor)
- Kentucky Colonel mint (strong spearmint flavor and large leaves)
- Pineapple mint (variegated white and green leaves)
Lavender
Every potager garden needs at least one lavender plant. Fragrant and beautiful with attractive gray-green leaves and purple flowers, lavender is a romantic and useful plant to have.
I grow English lavender (lavandula angustifolia) because it’s the best for culinary use and because it’s the only type of lavender that’s hardy in my zone (6A). French (L. dentata) and Spanish (L. stoechas) lavenders are beautiful, but only thrive in zones 8 and above.
Lavender likes to grow in a hot and dry location and dislikes areas with high humidity.
Use lavender as a path edge or garden border. Flowers are great dried and incorporated in spice or salt blends like in my herb salt recipe and good for flavoring syrups to use in drinks.
Try my lavender lemonade recipe if you’ve never had lavender in drinks before!
Lemon Balm
Lemon balm has a citrusy, lemony fragrance and makes a wonderful, calming tea. It’s in the mint family, so keep it under control by giving it it’s own container or raised bed.
Lemon balm can be used in teas, infused syrups, and more. It’s also traditionally used to promote relaxation and reduce anxiety.
This plant is hardy in zones 4-8. For best flavor, pinch off flowers.
Winter Savory
Winter savory isn’t commonly grown in most gardens, but it makes an attractive border plant and has a great scent.
It is hardy in zones 5-11 and tastes best in bean dishes and as a seasoning for chicken and fish. Savory mixes well with other herbs and enhances the flavor of Mediterranean herbs like thyme, oregano, and sage.
Like lavender and sage, it is a semi-woody plant. Regularly harvesting savory with deep cuts will keep it from forming a woody base.
Summer savory is the annual counterpart of winter savory and will not return the following year.
Rosemary
Rosemary is a wonderfully fragrant herb with deep green leaves. It enjoys growing in a sunny, dry location with great drainage.
While it’s only hardy in zones 8-11, I’ve developed my own way of keeping rosemary going year after year through propagation. Read all about propagating rosemary in this post to find out how I do it.
For gardening friends in cooler zones, “Arp” rosemary is supposed to be the most cold hardy variety. I tried to grow it once in the ground in zone 6A, but it didn’t survive for me. If you’ve had good luck in zone 6, please let me know what variety you have and what you do to keep it alive!
Rosemary makes a great border and can be trimmed to create a formal hedge or topiary in your garden.
Fennel
Fennel is a perennial herb that has feathery leaves like dill and produces umbels of yellow flowers in the summer. You can use the sweet, anise-flavored leaves, seeds, or bulb to eat. (Keep in mind that if you harvest the bulb, you will kill the plant.)
I grow bronze fennel which has pretty bronze leaves and grows very tall. My husband isn’t a huge fan of fennel, so this plant is more for show than it is for the table in our garden!
Fennel is hardy in zones 5-9, but is a short-lived perennial.
It will reseed like crazy, so if you want to prevent that from happening, cut the seed heads off after flowering. Save the seeds to eat or to replant the next year.
Bonus: Bay Laurel
Bay laurel is an aromatic shrub or tree that is hardy only in zones 8-11. Cooler zones can grow bay laurel in containers and overwinter the containers indoors.
Besides its extremely fragrant leaves, bay laurel can add structure to an edible garden as it is easily pruned into a tree form or topiary form.
I’ll admit, I don’t grow this particular herb yet, but I do like to use dried bay leaves in my kitchen. If you live in a warmer zone, give bay laurel a try for adding formality to your garden.
Honorable Mention: Parsley
Although parsley is not a perennial, but a biennial, I couldn’t resist giving it an honorable mention.
Biennials are plants that produce lots of leafy growth in it’s first year and then go to seed and complete its life cycle the following year.
Parsley will overwinter in zones 5-11 and grows well in just about any zone. Allow the parsley to flower in the spring the next year and you’ll be rewarded with droves of pollinators and beneficial insects.
Using Perennial Herbs in Garden Design
Tucking a few herb plants here and there works great to increase biodiversity and allows you to have fresh herbs right outside your doorstep.
But if you really want to up your garden design game, perennial herbs can help you do just that.
Try one of these ideas to bring structure, texture, or a surprising touch to your garden:
- Define borders with compact herbs like chives and lavender
- Fill gaps between pavers or stepping stones with creeping ground covers
- Create rhythm by repeating the same herb as an accent plant throughout your beds
- Plant single specimens in containers for a sculptural look
- Pair with flowering annuals in pots for an unexpected combination
- Play with texture by placing fine-leaved herbs next to wide-leaved plants
- Add color with purple or variegated varieties like tricolor sage or pineapple mint
- Bring height and structure with taller herbs like bay laurel and rosemary
- Add formality by trimming woody herbs like rosemary or thyme into box shapes or spheres
RELATED POST: Design a Potager Garden You’ll Never Want to Leave
Using Perennial Herbs at Home
Herbs are wonderful to use in cooking, for simple DIYs, and also for easy bouquets. Here are a few of my best posts on using perennial herbs in the kitchen and for the home.
- Chive Blossom Vinegar Recipe
- How to Brew the Best Dried or Fresh Herbal Tea
- How to Make Lavender Simple Syrup
- DIY Lavender Wreath Using Fresh Lavender
- 9 Herbs for Flower Arranging to Add Fragrance and Texture
Perennial Herbs Deserve a Spot In Your Garden
Perennial herbs really do deserve a spot in every garden because they do more than just add flavor. They also bring beauty, structure, and unexpectedness.
And best of all, they’re productive, low-maintenance, and come back year after year.
I hope you’ll let a few herbs out of the herb bed and into your ornamental or flower beds this year!
For more on cottage vegetable gardening, read these: