You can't have missed the outcry about the removal of the herbal extract, St John's Wort (Hypericum), from the shelves of health food shops. We tried using it in this house to cheer ourselves up in the depths of winter and to boost our immune systems. In the end we felt no different - except for a slight depression owing to its high cost - so we gave it up. Hypericum grows wild in our garden, but we don't ingest it, ever: self-medication with herbs can be a dicey business, unless you know exactly what you're at.
Culinary herbs are a different matter, and these we consume with enthusiasm: the most pedestrian salad is stepped up with a scattering of fresh dill, fennel, chives, parsley or whatever else is at hand. Of course, growing the herbs close by - within a three-second gallop from the kitchen - is important if you want to enjoy them to the full. A sprig of marjoram for the tomato sauce? There and back in a rapid dash. A few mint leaves for a last-minute cucumber salad? A quick sprint and it's yours.
Perhaps the easiest way to cultivate herbs is in containers. The Mediterranean types - those with intensely aromatic, greyish, hard or hairy foliage - come from sunny, well-drained habitats and are well-suited to terracotta. Thyme, sage, rosemary and marjoram look romantically southern European when encased in warm, redbrown pots. Place a layer of crocks (broken pot-shards) in the bottom and fill with compost. Add some grit to the mixture if it is too dense and heavy. When picking, harvest the growing tips to encourage the plants to bush out and to form more graceful, long-lasting shapes. Potted herbs, depending on their size, and your use of them, may last only a year or so, but most are easily propagated from cuttings in early summer. Or they can be replaced regularly with inexpensive plants from a garden centre or supermarket. Herbs with greener, more tender leaves such as chives, parsley, mint and lemon balm will also grow in containers, but need a moister soil and should be kept out of the battering sun. Mint, however, is happiest when given a shady position in the garden where its invasive tendencies can be let rip. If possible, grow two kinds: spearmint and the delicious, succulent Bowles' mint. Basil is the inseparable companion of tomatoes, and a firm friend of the warm, new potato salad (dressed with garlic, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil). But it's a bit tricky to grow. Sow it very sparsely in individual containers and grow on a sunny windowsill or hot patio. Water only when it is about to wilt.
A formal herb garden is a luxury in today's tiny patches, and if you're planning one it needs to look pretty good all year round. A strong outline, with compartments, is necessary to compensate for floppy plants and middle-aged, past-their-best specimens. Certain parts may often be empty, when annual herbs such as coriander, dill and borage are newly-sown or have finished up (all three dislike being moved, and are best grown from seed sown in the open ground).
Low box edging is terribly posh-looking - as in the herb garden at Ballymaloe Cookery School, shown above, which was inspired by the gardens at Villandry in the Loire Valley. It's also remarkably long-lasting, but fairly slow-growing. For a more instant effect, you could frame the beds with brick paths and line them with chives, parsley, sweet violet or a low-growing thyme such as the slightly-variegated `Doone Valley'. "Punctuation marks" are needed in the formal herb garden to give extra form to an otherwise amorphous mass of plants. Use bay trees - in pots or in the ground - or make wigwams to provide a foothold for climbing nasturtium or sweet pea.
However, if you - like me - have no room for miniature Villandrys in your backyard, the most practical way to grow certain herbs is in your borders. Chives, lavender and sage make agreeable front-row plants. Purple sage (Salvia officinalis Purpurascens Group) with its violet-flushed new leaves looks good with grey-foliaged plants, while the yellow-and-green variety `Icterina' (also known as `Variegata') makes a muted gold splash. Garlic chives have artless, white flowers in late summer while borage (a bit prone to mildew) has clear blue stars and hairy leaves, traditionally used in Pimms - a drink I've somehow never come across in my life.
But the herb of herbs, the most stately prince of plumes, has got to be fennel, and preferably bronze fennel. A perennial from Mediterranean Europe, it rises up from the ground every year to form a five-foot haze of feathery foliage. It cheers me up no end, especially when the yellow flowers are visited by hoverflies.
It's good for the body too. Sir John Harington wrote in The Englishman's Doctor in 1607: "Of Fennel vertues foure they do recite,/ First, it hath power some poysons to expell,/ Next, burning Agues it will put to flight,/ The stomach it doth cleanse, and comfort well:/ And fourthly, it doth keep and cleanse the sight". And as Caleb Threlkeld adds in the first flora of Ireland, published in 1726: "its aperitive Quality commends it for Use in eating Fish".
Organically-grown herbs are available from the Herb Garden, Naul, Co Dublin. Tel: 01-8413907, email: herbs@indigo.ie Visitors to nursery by appointment only, or find the Herb Garden stall at Temple Bar Market, Dublin, on Saturdays, April to June.
The incorrect web adress ws given for the Irish Seed Savers Association in last week's column. The correct address is: www.catalase.com/issa.htm.