Adelma did not let us down. In her 1964 book, Herb Gardening in Five Seasons, she assured readers that certain types of herbs would grow in sun-dappled shade gardens. And she was not wrong. Herbs did grow. Flowers did form. And I did clip and cook my way through the summer. Just not quite in the way that I had anticipated.
If you are joining us for the first time, this post is part of a series started back in January 2025, about building an herb garden from scratch inspired by the horticultural wisdom of New England herbalist, Adelma Grenier Simmons (1903-1997). Catch up here for a proper introduction to Adelma and the inspiring gardens that she built at her Connecticut home, Caprilands over the course of the 20th century.
In January, when planning and preparations were underway for the start of our first-ever herb garden at 1750 House, I had visions. As I sketched out the location map of what herbs would go where and which companion plants would best be suited side-by-side, in my mind, the herb garden of summer 2025 would be eye-high. Right in step with the 5-foot tall foxglove success story of past gardening endeavors.
Emboldened by those towering giants of the woodlands that had been grown in the greenhouse from the smallest of seeds, I had visions that the herbs would grow equally tall. I had visions of their delicate petals swaying in the breeze. Of their foliage tinted in all the greens. I had visions that they’d make a home in and around the foxglove and create an undulating palette of soft colors. A cottage collection. A fully filled out bed.
While the ground was still frozen and snow-covered, I could see a full garden, busy with birds and bees and butterflies floating here and there. I could see the feathery chervil, the wave of parsley, the white petaled chamomile, the flax, the forget-me-nots, the dill, the lavender, the calendula. When the garden was covered under an ice-slick snow sheet, and I was starting seeds indoors, I had visions of deep summer in the herb garden. Hazy light, hot temperatures, the greenhouse surrounded by a vibrant and verdant utopia racing skyward to meet its peaks. I could see the bee balm on the right, the nasturtiums climbing a trellis on the left, and the foxgloves trying to out-stretch them both. I could see the savory, the sage, the oregano, the thyme creeping and heaping their way around the garden floor. As I collected seed packets in my garden tote in the weak light of winter, I imagined, months later, collecting herbs in a kitchen basket slated for summer meals made possible by the summer garden.
Back in January, bundled up in sweaters and scarves, I could anticipate the warm-weather blog posts. The recording of each new herb as it is unfurled week by week, month by month, all summer long. The sharing of what things looked like, smelled like, tasted like. The chamomile, the dill, the calendula. The mint, the basil, the cumin, the thyme. The unfolding of each new flower, each new leaf, day by day. They’d be blog posts that would practically write themselves, not because of AI (something I never use here on the blog) but because the herbs made it easy under Adelma’s experienced guidance and thoughtful instruction. I had visions.
Wrapping up eight months of gardening experience in one blog post is a lot to ask of a reader’s attention. So, in order not to make this post eighty miles long, I’m going to truncate a lot of what happened during the growing season. This is not an attempt to skirt over the challenges, of which there were many, and only to shine light on the successes. But building an herb garden, as I have learned this summer, is a bit like watching a tree grow minute by minute. Not a lot happens. And to be completely honest, not a lot happened for months.
When the seedlings grew strong and hearty indoors all through cold, snowy, rainy February and March and April, I knew they were off to a good start. The calendula was spilling over the sides of the seed tray on one end, while chamomile was mounding so full and lush on the other end, it was difficult to see the individual cell blocks from which they sprouted.
In May, everything headed out for planting. Optimism was high as all the seedlings were tucked into their pre-planned beds alongside their pre-planned companions. The summer garden visions were swirling with each dip of the spade into the soil. The cilantro next to the parsley, the flax next to the nasturtiums, the bergamot behind the feverfew, the oregano in front of the coleus, the echinacea before the fence. On and on, the digging and planting went all the way around the greenhouse. Three full sides layered in seedlings that would reach graduated heights of up to 5′ feet to match the foxglove. The shortest in front and the tallest in back.
Once planted, every seedling got its own individually made wire cage for protection from rabbits, deer, squirrels, and other wild creatures that might find a newly planted herb garden especially enticing. For about a week, things were good. The herbs settled in and seemed to be happy in their new spots. The branches of the trees overhead were leafing out, and the sun was doing its dappled dance. The visions were coming to life.
Then the cold snap came. The weather turned wet and winter-like for weeks. Memorial Day weekend was rained out with a nor’easter, not bringing snow, but rain and high winds and 40 degree days. By Mid-June, I was still doing gardening chores wearing a wool turtleneck sweater and jeans.
Despite the unusually cool start to spring, the 22-foot tall Japanese maple unfolded in its normal fashion, but instead of last year’s canopy, it reached an extra 24″ inches in length this year. This sent branches half-way across the greenhouse on one side and further into the front yard on the other side.
By July, a deep shade took over the whole left side of the greenhouse. The seedlings in that bed were the first to disappear. The nasturtiums, long and leggy already at just a month old, were eaten down to the ground in an afternoon’s timeframe. The cilantro, parsley, chives, and flax were next. All consumed by some mysterious creature, neither rabbit nor deer, but something smaller that could fit through the wire cages and snack away. My guess was that it was most likely the work of slugs, cut worms, and caterpillars who had made their presence known in other beds in years past, and who like to eat in the off hours when no one is watching. By the end of July, what was once a tender patch of steadily growing seedlings was now a framework of protective cages and bare dirt, with not an herb in sight.
Luckily though, as an experimental year, I planted herbs in several places around the garden, not just the greenhouse, so that we could see in which areas they grew best with varying lights of shade vs. sun. The reliable foxgloves in the front bed of the greenhouse grew to 5 feet and bloomed in shades of pink, purple, and white.
The foxglove seedlings in the back behind the greenhouse were squashed and trampled over by squirrels enroute to the birdfeeder and eventually were crushed to a papery pulp. The herbs on the right-hand side of the greenhouse (with lighter shade and much more sun-dappled conditions) fared far better but remained short and seedling size for months.
Although this photo above was taken in late June, the plants never really got much bigger than this over the next 60 days. Each formed their own little clump, but never branched out enough for one to meet the other, which was my initial idea in order to create a full garden. The mystery pest got the best of the herbs on the far edges of this bed too… the echinacea, the bergamot, the chives, and the chervil, but left the lemon balm, the oregano, and the feverfew alone. As an herb that symbolizes protection and new beginnings, I immediately loved the fortitude of the feverfew. Planted all around our pup Indie’s headstone, as a way to safeguard her spirit and to mark a new chapter, it was encouraging to see that it was now protecting the neighboring herbs too.
Every week, I kept waiting for something spectacular to happen: for something to catch a growth spurt and shoot up tall. But throughout the entire summer, all the seedlings that had been planted in early spring remained short and compact. Despite the organic compost laid in a thick blanket, despite the weekly waterings, and despite the regular fertilizer feedings, the herbs kept to a mercifully slow schedule. Meanwhile, the rest of the vegetable and flower gardens all around 1750 House flourished.
In Adelma’s summer chapter of Herb Gardening in Five Seasons, she recommended two options in regard to feeding herbs: a commercially available (mid-20th century) fertilizer containing a 23-21-17 ratio and a homemade version of manure tea. While there are several horse and cow farms in our surrounding area, I have yet to see if any of these farms offer organic manure for sale, so I opted for the latter. The exact makeup of the commercial fertilizer that Adelma had recommended, is no longer available in that specific configuration anymore. I wound up making my own fertilizer combination comprised of organic seaweed, bone meal and banana peel water which was the closest I could get to mirroring her nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium ratio.
Finally, when the end of August approached, a growth spurt occurred. The herbs in the greenhouse bed started spreading out wide, but not high. The tallest herb was the lemon balm, measuring in at 5 1/2 inches in height, about 19″ inches shorter than what it should typically be. So you can see that things were not exactly ideal in this area of the garden, but they were at least improving slightly.
Just as the lemon balm and feverfew started fluffing out, the tiniest of forget-me-nots bloomed. It was one single flower of dainty proportions and the the prettiest shade of blue, a color not that common in the garden beds here. As a spreading perennial, it was a hopeful sign that they were establishing themselves. That the herb garden might be turning a corner towards long-lasting success. The photo is not so great, but the flowers really were lovely.
Later in the week, bunnies ate the anemone. The mystery pest came back too and ate the forget-me-nots, flower and all, and then ate the bergamot for dessert.
As a true experimental garden, I didn’t interfere with any of the plants, but just observed their progress, keeping notes, and taking photos on what survived and what didn’t and in what location with what amount of sun. When I sketched out the garden in January, I paired all the seedlings with their most ideal companion plantings based on compatibility, size, structural composition, and color so that everything harmonized and flowed together. When companion planting, there’s the added benefit that these specific pairings “help” one another, whether it’s underground adding additional nutrition via their roots or above ground adding protection or distraction from various pests. This step of the planning process is pretty intensive because many things can’t be planted next to each for lots of varied reasons. Add in additional factors like water, soil, and sun requirements, and this placement-of-the-herbs exercise turns into a puzzle on paper best executed with a pencil and a sizable eraser. It took many days to get the garden plan correctly mapped out over winter. What I didn’t plan for though was Santiago.
In early September, on a beautiful sunny Sunday, Santiago, our 21-year-old cat, said a peaceful goodbye to life at 1750 House. Maybe nature worked in our favor over the summer leading up to the moment when we laid Santi to rest in the spot in the greenhouse garden where the anemone once stood. It was an ideal new home for Santi. Near his favorite rock with the hollowed out middle that became his outdoor water bowl, it was also close to his pal, Indie, with full view of the bird feeder and the woodlands and all the wild creatures that sparked his curiosity each and every day since he arrived a southern cat in a northern land.
Back in January, penciled in around the anemone were pink and white echinacea, foxglove, lemon balm, parsley, mint, chives, and oregano. Now in reality, in September, Santiago’s inclusion in the garden inspired something different. A new vision. One that transformed this side of the greenhouse into a brand-new kind of garden altogether. Instead of an entire bed filled with herbs with a foxglove end cap, a new celebration garden was coming into light. One that represented joyful memories in the form of plants. One that captured the engaging spirits of our long friendships with a ten pound cat and the most enthusiastic pup on the planet. The foxglove, feverfew, and lemon balm will stay, but in place of adding other herbs, next spring, I’ll be adding flowers and shrubs suited to shade that carry reminders of Indie and Santiago. Instead of a bed for scented herbs, it will become a bed of sentiment, which is not unlike how colonial gardens were built in America in the first place.
Faced with not much time left in the growing season to start something new, the winter offers the opportunity to think about the perfect plant to represent Santiago, this marvelous little friend we’ve known for two decades. I don’t know quite yet what companion will join him, but I do know that it will be a dramatic standout flower amongst the herbs, just like Santiago was a dramatic standout kitty amongst cats.
In the other experimental herb garden beds, challenges and triumphs ebbed and flowed with the swell of the season. The second location was a full-sun bed in the front yard that surrounds a 100-year-old maple tree.
The bed was vacant when we moved in, except for three clumps of rusty-red daylilies planted years ago by a previous owner.
To celebrate the full sun location and to compliment the color palette of the daylilies, I planted the whole bed in shades of yellow and orange with a touch of pale pink. Calendula, yarrow, and blackberry lily seedlings were planted between coral bells, sweet potato vines, cosmos, and zinnias.
The calendula were the winners in this bed since they made it to full flower and kept flowering along with the cosmos and zinnia from June to November. The calendula formed little bushes of sticky leaves and multiple flower shoots. Had I planted about twice as many, they would have filled out all the bare spots in the bed completely. The yarrow and blackberry lily took the whole summer to establish themselves, but by September they both sported long leaves, so I’m hoping they’ll over winter with healthy vigor and really take off next year.
The third bed was also planted in full sun, but because of this year’s extending tree canopy, it turned out to be covered by partial shade once all the leaves unfurled in early summer. Since this bed, tends to dry out more quickly, it was the ideal spot for the Mediterranean herbs (lavender, rosemary, thyme, oregano, cumin, and sage) along with winter savory, dill, garlic, chamomile and one brussels sprout added for encouragement and nitrogen sharing. Most everything did well in this bed, except for the garlic which grew lovely, long green leaves but never formed actual bulbs, and the cumin which flopped over in the cold weather of spring and never really rallied after that. Like the greenhouse beds, everything planted here remained small and compact but looked healthy and happy. In August, the chamomile flowered for the first time, sending up two fragile little blossoms. Days later, in the early morning when I came out to water, all eight of the chamomile mounds and the dill were eaten down to nubs.
The last of the herb beds, located on the other end of the backyard from the greenhouse, contained basil and and another batch of nasturtiums. These beds were in partial shade last year, but turned out to be in full sun this year, due to a large tree that fell far back in the woods last autumn. That opened up a bit of a sun spot in the tree canopy overhead that was fortuitously in the direct path of our vegetable beds. Planting seedlings in spring when the trees were still bare, I had no idea this sun spot was going to be available, but it made it a banner year for everything growing in that section of the yard, basil included. Racing right alongside the pepper plants, the basil grew over two feet tall and produced leaves as big as my hand.
The nasturtiums, a reliable favorite for the past four years, thrived in the same way. Grown from seeds I collected from last year’s nasturtium harvest, this was the first time I had tried growing new flowers from the previous year’s stock, a recommendation from my fellow New England Instagram gardening friend, Karen. The vigor of the nasturtiums in this sunny bed, which bloomed and crawled for a full seven months, more than made up for the nasturtiums that were eaten by the mystery pest on the left side of the greenhouse in early spring.
Their enthusiasm inspired more seed saving adventures. Not only from the nasturtiums again, but also from vegetables we grew this summer and from two native herbs, Joe Pye and Queen Anne’s Lace, collected from a neighborhood park. It’s going to be fun to see how (and if) these will grow here at 1750 House next spring.
The final gardening trial in my experimental year involved starting four different types of herbs again in early September. This time, seeds were started in individual pots and in a raised bed, both placed in full sun locations in the back yard. I chose chervil, parsley, dill, and cilantro to experiment with since these are all cool weather lovers and since all four never made it to maturity in other in-ground areas of the garden. The chervil and parsley were planted separately in small pots, one plastic and one terracotta. The cilantro, dill, and a second batch of chervil were planted side by side in a raised bed that had previously been home to lettuce and mini melons, both of which thrived over the course of the summer.
I was interested to see if these containers and bins made a difference in the overall vigor of the plants and also interested to see what challenges might affect the herbs in this new arrangement. Within a week, all the herbs had sprouted from seed. The chervil in the garden pot made it to flowering stage, but still remained much shorter than its traditionally intended size. The parsley filled out its pot. The trio in the raised bed grew quickly too. All three spread out and up but the chervil and dill remained short and low. The cilantro grew taller and fanned out beautifully, like a bouquet. None of the herbs in the pots or the raised bed were affected by pests.
As of this first week in December… there are still green herbs in the garden: in every bed from the greenhouse to the front yard to the backyard. Already tucked in to their winter blankets (aka mounds of leaf mulch surrounding them but not covering them) they made it through their first snow/sleet/ice storm on Tuesday and look just as happy as they did on the days when the temperatures were 50 degrees and sunny. This makes me so hopeful that in starting an herb garden in 2025 with Adelma’s guidance, enough healthy groundwork has been laid for many of these herbs to overwinter and start anew again in 2026.
This experimental year proved to be so valuable in so many ways. Not only did I learn first-hand about the growing conditions for herbs at 1750 House, but I learned about how our landscape changes year by year. I learned that shade is good but sun is better. That parts of the garden need more protection from wildlife. That a sizable list of herbs will have a permanent home in the gardens here going forward. And I was reminded that gardening is a journey. That it takes not just one year, but many years and lots of patience and practice to establish a full, lush and vibrant herb garden.
This project also extended itself way beyond the landscape at 1750 House too. Throughout the course of the year, I connected with several new blog readers from around the globe who are also interested in herb gardening. I visited a very inspiring large-scale herb garden that’s about to celebrate its 30th birthday, and I received a lovely invitation to visit the Coventry Historical Society in Coventry, Connecticut, which houses a small collection of herbs from Adelma’s gardens along with some of her personal artifacts.
So while my winter time visions of early 2025 did not come to life in the exact way I thought they might, the herb garden bloomed in many other ways. Because this was just the starting point of what I hope will become a long-standing garden feature here at 1750 House, stories about Adelma and the herb garden adventures will be continuing on the blog throughout 2026 too. There’s so much more to discuss, including notes on caring for a batch of herbs that were brought indoors to overwinter, recipes from Adelma’s kitchen, a recipe for a homemade salve made from the calendula flowers that grew in the front bed, the neighborhood seed saving experiments, and features on both a trip to the Coventry Historical Society and the 30 year old herb garden. All these stories and more will be coming to the blog over the course of 2026.
In the meantime, our herbal education continues.
Cheers to Adelma for making this garden experience feel like a real experiment. Cheers to all the herbs for teaching us everything we needed to know when it comes to growing new life at 1750 House. And most importantly, cheers to Santiago, who gave us far more than just a mere 21 years together. Long live the garden you’ve inspired.
In the Vintage Kitchen: Where History Comes To Eat 