Hello, I'm Liz Zorab and this is Byther Farm. And today I want to talk to you about my
five favorite perennial herbs. So I'm going to start off with this. This is a
sweet bay, its leaves are highly aromatic and I use, well, I use them in soups and
stews and they're actually better when they're dried. So they're really
simple to grow, fairly unfussy plants and very easy to propagate. So you take a
piece, strip the bottom leaves off,
cut it just below and leaf joint, pop it into some soil and away it will go.
It's, I just love it! When we moved here three years ago, this plant was probably
not even knee-high and not a foot across, so it has, it likes this space, it's done
really well. My parents had one of these at their cottage which turned into an
enormous bush. My hope is that eventually it will fill this space And here in my
raised herb bed are two more of my favorites.This is bronze fennel, it's
grown very easily from seed, it adds an aniseed flavor to your cooking. I like to
put very finely chopped leaves in our salads. it just lifts it and lightens the
salad a little bit. And the plants are just are so architectural. It has this
frothy foliage and then sends up flower spikes, here's one
with these flat heads of flowers which bees and other pollinators absolutely
love. Now I leave these on the plant all winter, I collect some of the dried seed and
I leave the rest for the birds to help themselves to throughout the winter.
And over here at the front is a rosemary. This is quite an upright rosemary, but it
comes in several forms. This is a horizontal, almost weeping one, so it
spreads out across and it has beautiful little mauve flowers on it.
I love rosemary. And this too is very simple to propagate. This one was taken
from a cutting by snapping a piece off, and once again removing the lower leaves,
pushing it into the soil and waiting. And within a year that's grown roots
and will be growing into a new plant. I'll actually quite like to create a
whole hedge of rosemary, so that as I walk past it, we've got that lovely smell
from it.
And the next is French tarragon. Another one that gives an aniseed flavor.
This is fabulous with fish, with chicken and it's actually also really lovely
with pear. So I've just bought these in little modules and I've been potting
them up today, so they're waiting to be watered. I'll grow those on and plant them
out and then as long as I haven't planted them in the frost pocket of the
garden, they should be fine for a good few years. To propagate these you need
to take cuttings from them, so when these grow I will take some more cutting so I
have more of it. They don't seem to set viable seed, so cuttings it is!
We've been joined in the greenhouse by a bumblebee. Every year I seem to get
bumble bee-d and it steals the limelight. No doubt it will find its way out in a moment.
And the other perennial herb that I want to tell you about is sweet cicely. Now I
don't actually have any of that in my garden - yet! But I have got seeds and I
bought these in the autumn, but they need to have a period of cold or else
they won't germinate. So they've been in my fridge most of the autumn and all
the winter. I'm going to sow these today, Then hopefully before too long I'll
have some sweet cicely for the garden as well. Now really don't recommend that
you go and just pick what you think is sweet cicely because it could be one
of the hogweed family, which could make you ill, so that's not a great idea.
Sweet cicely can be told by the creamy white spots on its leaves, on the main
part of its leaf, but much better to grow your own from seed and then you know
you've got the right thing. I use sweet cicely in cooking to take
the bitterness out of rhubarb, in fact that's probably the only thing I use it for,
but it earns its place in my garden just to be able to do that. So it takes
the acidity out of rhubarb. You can use it with other fruits like
apple. So I'm going to get sowing this.
There we go, ten seeds there. Again covering it with grit to keep the
seeds in place while I'm watering it and pop in the label and I'll water this by
standing it in a tray of water and let the water soak up through it and then
fingers crossed by the end of the year I'll have sweet cicely in the garden.
I'll leave links to them and other things I've shown you in this video in
the information below.
That's a really noisy bumblebee in here. Where are you bumble? Come on, out you come!
Yeah you're not being smart, are you? Out your go, there you go, no keep going, keep going!
So close, so close. No! Oh bumble bee, you and I are going to fall out, aren't we? What about if I open the window, is there a chance you'll go out that way?
Which way are you going? Go on, go out the door. Oh you're nearly there!
Go on! Yay!
There's always some bit of wildlife that wants to steal the limelight!
So sweet cicely...
So there we go, that's my five favorite perennial herbs.
And so wherever you are in the world and whatever you've got
planned for today, I hope it's a good one and also hope you'll join me again next time.